Tag Archives: Amateur Radio

Jul 12 2015

Amateur Radio Geostationary Transponder and the Adventures of a Hacker Turned Radio Ham

Qatar Amateur Radio Society Geostationary Transponders Leaflet Page 1

Qatar Amateur Radio Society Geostationary Transponders Leaflet Page 1

HamRadioNow episode 211 features two presentations given at the TAPR/AMSAT banquet on Friday, May 15 at the 2015 Dayton Hamvention. The first is about the Amateur Radio transponder on the geostationary satellite Es’hail 2 by Thani Ali al-Malki followed by Adventures of a Hacker Turned Ham by Michael Ossmann AD0NR. .

The night begins with a short presentation on what will be the first Amateur Radio transponder on a geostationary satellite, a project of the Qatar Amateur Radio Society, with help from AMSAT DL (Germany). The satellite, Es’HailSAT-2, is owned by the Qatar Satellite Company, and senior engineer Thani Ali al-Malki will give the details. Western Hemisphere hams will be disappointed that the satellite footprint won’t cover anything in North America or Australia, and just a bit of South America. The satellite is primarily a communications system for Qatar and the Middle East, but the ham transponder will also cover Europe, Africa and western Asia (but also missing the China coast and Japan).

Mike Ossmann AD0NR – Image Credit www.insinuator.net

Mike Ossmann AD0NR – Image Credit http://www.insinuator.net

Michael Ossmann, AD0NR, founder of Great Scott Gadgets grew up as a computer nerd embracing the hacker ethos. Eventually Michael became very interested in the security of wireless systems such as remote keyless entry, garage door openers, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. He designed Ubertooth One, a Bluetooth sniffer that was successfully funded on Kickstarter.

Not one to rest, Michael later designed and successfully funded HackRF One, an open source SDR platform that attracted the attention of the amateur radio community. Michael talks about his unique perspective on the community as an outsider looking in, why he resisted getting an amateur radio license for years, and why he finally decided to join. Michael shares his thoughts on what it means to be a hacker, what it means to be a ham, and what amateur radio may look like in the decades to come.

TAPR President Steve Bible N7HPR‘s introduction establishes the youth theme with an interesting survey of the crowd.

Watch HRN 211: Adventures of a Hacker Turned Ham (Michael Ossmann AD0NR) on HamRadioNow

Previous editions of HamRadioNow http://www.youtube.com/user/HamRadioNow/videos

Es’hail 2 geostationary satellite https://amsat-uk.org/satellites/geosynchronous/eshail-2/

Jul 9 2015

DeorbitSail Launch Information

deorbitsail_slide2The CubeSat DeorbitSail built by researchers and radio amateurs at the Surrey Space Centre in Guildford carries a  1200 bps BPSK beacon on 145.975 MHz. It is expected to launch at 1627 UT on  Friday, July 10.

DeorbitSail is a 3U CubeSat sized satellite with a deployable sail that will demonstrate rapid deorbiting.

Chris Bridges 2E0OBC writes:

Dear AMSAT’ers, CubeSat’ers, Friends,

Please find attached exclusive details of a UK CubeSat called DeorbitSail flying out tomorrow evening on PSLV. Please feel free to distribute to other hams that can help out.

This contains all the info you should need including:
• Initial TLE
• DeorbitSail Flyer > Launch details, etc.
• Predicted first packet transmission on 145.975 MHz, 1k2 BPSK -> we predict to be over Russia in the evening.
• Beacon and Packet Formats are here: DOS Message Definitions RD+CPB

First packets sent in will get a Signed Certificate of thanks from the team!

If you have any telemetry or TLE/frequency information, please send it to me and/or to deorbitsail.messages@gmail.com so we can quickly learn our satellite state.

Any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!

73 Chris 2E0OBC

DEORBITSAIL
1 55554U 58056A   15191.72643157  .00000000  00000-0 +13828-4 0   335
2 55554  97.9842  81.0881 0007584 273.9578  86.0949 14.75593446209360

Follow @SpaceAtSurrey on Twitter

DeorbitSail website http://www.surrey.ac.uk/ssc/research/space_vehicle_control/deorbitsail/

Download DeorbitSail leaflet

Download DeorbitSail Message Definitions

ISRO PSLV-C28 / DMC3 Mission http://www.isro.gov.in/launcher/pslv-c28-dmc3-mission

International Space Colloquium at Guildford July 25-26
https://amsat-uk.org/2015/06/16/international-space-colloquium-at-guildford/

Jul 9 2015

CAMSAT Launch Postponement

CAMSAT XW-2A formerly known as CAS-3A

CAMSAT XW-2A formerly known as CAS-3A

A launch postponement has been announced for Beijing’s new CZ-6 rocket which is planned to carry a constellation of amateur radio satellites.

Soon to be launched six CAMSAT satellites CAS-3A to F have now been named as XW-2 (Hope-2) amateur satellite system, and correspond to the XW-2A to F.

All the satellites have completed environmental testing, currently being burn-in tests, everything is underway. The satellites will be moved to the launch center in mid-August and launch date has been postponed to early September.

73!

Alan Kung, BA1DU

CAMSAT XW-2 satellites https://amsat-uk.org/satellites/communications/camsat-xw-2/

Jul 7 2015

UK Spectrum Strategy

RSGB Amateur Radio SlideOn June 30, 2015, Graham Murchie, G4FSG, RSGB Chairman and Murray Niman, G6JYB, Chairman of the RSGB Spectrum Forum presented the case for amateur radio to the UK Spectrum Policy Forum (UKSPF). The Amateur-Satellite Service featured in this presentation.

The Forum has been established as a sounding board to UK Government and Ofcom on future approaches on spectrum with a view to maximising the social and economic value from the spectrum.

The UK Prime Minister David Cameron has stated the ambition to double “the economic benefits of spectrum to UK companies and consumers from roughly £50 billion today, to £100 billion in 2025″.

The UK Spectrum Policy Forum, open to all users of spectrum, is the main vehicle for harnessing user insights and informing these policy decisions.

Read the RSGB story at http://rsgb.org/main/blog/news/gb2rs/headlines/2015/07/06/uk-spectrum-strategy/

Download the presentation slides http://thersgb.org/archives/events/ukspf/150703-RSGB-UKSPF-presentation.pptx

UK Spectrum Policy Forum (UKSPF) https://www.techuk.org/about/uk-spectrum-policy-forum

Jul 5 2015

UWE-3 Status Report

UWE-3 LogoThe UWE-3 team have provided an update on investigations into a recent communications anomaly on the CubeSat

After the communication anomaly and the autonomous recovery of UWE-3 two weeks ago we uploaded an extended software to the OBC to analyse the event in detail. As we already have known the EPS, OBC and ADCS were not affected, so the secondary radio.

During the tests made possible by the new software we temporarily switched back to the primary radio to check its electrical characteristics and communication performance. As the values were promisingly normal we performed extensive communication tests without seeing any existing anomaly.

Therefore we will continue normal operation.

Yours sincerely,

UWE-3 Team

UWE-3 was launched with FUNcube-1 on November 21, 2013. Latest UWE-3 news at
http://www7.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de/forschung/space_exploration/projects/uwe_3/uwe_3_news/

Jul 5 2015

School plans 2am balloon launch

Sun Chaser - LogoStudents at Queen Mary’s Grammar School, Walsall plan to launch the Sun Chaser 2 balloon (434.448 MHz USB) to capture images of the sunrise on Saturday, July 11.

Depending on altitude the signals from the balloon may have a range of up to 800 km, potentially covering much of the British Isles. Those outside the coverage area can receive the signals online using the SUWS WebSDR.

The school’s Project Horizon team say: We’re having a second attempt to capture footage of the sunrise from the Stratosphere over Wales/West England.

Watch the mission trailer

The report on launch 1 (some useful lessons learn’t, such as check interference by testing the GPS will all other kit running in the box and ALWAYS duct tape batteries into a cell holder) can be found here:
http://horizon.qmgs.walsall.sch.uk/index.html#sunchaserlaunch1

All being well, we have planned to launch from:

Location: Queen Mary’s Grammar School, Sutton Rd, Walsall, West Midlands, WS1 2PG
Latitude: 52.577498
Longitude: -1.965008
Altitude: 135m

The launch will take place at ~2:00am on Saturday 11th July (Sunday 12th is our reserve date).

The chase team will track and chase throughout the flight.

The probe will have a radio tracker (with two smartphone trackers as backup connected to two different networks). We’ve also got a couple of 16MP cameras and a GoPro onboard.

Tracker information:

Tracker: SUNCH1
Frequency: 434.448 MHz USB
Carrier Shift: 280-290
Baud Rate: 50
Bits per character: 7 (ASCII)
Parity: 0
Stop Bits: 2

As before, we’ll probably be the only ones tracking (unless any of you are night owls) so we’ll do our best. Our internet connection may be patchy at times so be prepared for quiet moments when we’re passing through low signal areas (we’ve got two hotspots with us: EE and O2).

We’ll be posting a steady stream of updates to twitter: https://twitter.com/horizonqmgs

We’re quietly confident, now we just need the wind speed on the ground to drop to 3-5mph 😉

Wish us luck!

QMGS Project Horizon http://horizon.qmgs.walsall.sch.uk/

Links for tracking balloons online and the SUWS WebSDR are at
https://amsat-uk.org/beginners/balloons/