Results of last weekend’s tests: the transponder was maintained ON for two orbits, and we did not see any noticeable fall in battery temperature.
We are therefore proposing to repeat the test on Saturday, March 29, but leave the transponder on for a longer period. We will switch it on during the first pass over the UK (approx 10:30 UT) and switch it off during one of the evening passes over UK, the first of which is at approx 20:00 UT.
We are particularly interested to receive TLM when the satellite is coming out of eclipse (i.e. when it should be at its coldest temperature). So reception from suitably located stations would be very welcome.
If you hear the transponder on, please feel free to use it!
Tony Monteiro AA2TX and Mark Hammond N4MH being interviewed by Gary Pearce KN4AQ on Ham Radio Now
AMSAT VP-Engineering and Board Member Anthony J. Monteiro, AA2TX of North Andover, MA died on Wednesday morning, March 26, 2014 while hospitalized in Boston, MA from cancer. He was 55. He is survived by his wife, Mary Lou and daughter, Veronica, a college freshman.
Tony Monteiro AA2TX and Fox-1 model
Tony was first licensed in 1973 as a Novice and subsequently held an Extra Class Amateur Radio License. An avid operator, he described his first contact in an AMSAT BoD Candidate’s Statement in 2011: “I earned my novice ticket in 1973 and made my first ham radio contact with a transmitter made from parts out of an old TV set. A Heathkit HR-10B receiver and a 65-foot piece of wire strung out of a window for an antenna made up the rest of my station, which was pretty modest even by 1973 standards! Even so, I will never forget the thrill of my very first contact.”
His interest in amateur radio and electronics led him to earn a BS in Electrical Engineering from Drexel University and a MS in Computer Science from Stanford University. His professional career started at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey developing network management systems and then consumer products. After working at several startup companies, Tony landed at Cisco Systems where he managed the development of ADSL, voice over packet, and content networking products. He retired from industry in 2002 and focused his efforts working on satellite projects.
Tony joined AMSAT in 1994 and started working the satellites. He earned ARRL VHF/UHF Century Club-Satellite #58 and worked 49 states (only Hawaii was not logged) as well. Tony worked a number of stations while he commuted along the I-495 corridor outside Boston. Many will remember working him through AO-40 as he utilized his “cardboard box horn antenna.” Tony led a workshop at the 2003 AMSAT Space Symposium where students built similar antennas, demonstrating the ease in which one could build a 2.4 GHz S-band antenna to receive the AO-40 downlink.
70 cms Parasitic Lindenbald designed by Tony Monteiro AA2TX
Additional technical contributions to the amateur satellite community that Tony made included “InstantTune Automatic Radio Tuning” software, “A Simple Desense Filter for Echo”, and several extremely low cost projects such as “A $5 Mode V/S Adapter using a Sub-Harmonic Mixer”. AMSAT-UK used to offer a 70 cm Parasitic Lindenblad antenna based upon his design.
Tony also played a significant role in space-based hardware development. He collaborated on the NO-60 satellite. As AMSAT’s VP-Engineering, he served as the software designer for the SDX (Software Defined Transponder) on ARISSat-1/Kedr that was deployed from the International Space Station by Russian Cosmonauts during a space walk in August 2011. Tony led the Fox-1 Engineering Team from inception in 2009 and led AMSAT’s efforts to apply for acceptance of Fox-1 in the NASA Education Launch of NanoSat (ELaNA) in 2011 and Fox-1B in 2012. He established relationships with several universities to secure scientific payloads for Fox-1 and Fox-1B, including student experiments.
Penn State Behrend students working on an AMSAT supercapacitor satellite battery – Image John Fontecchio
A strong proponent of student involvement in satellite projects, Tony served as coordinator of AMSAT Engineering relationships with SUNY-Binghamton, Penn State-Erie, Virginia Tech, and Rochester Institute of Technology where students developed new technologies to be applied in future AMSAT spacecraft as “Capstone” projects. These projects, such as the development of storage capacitors to replace batteries developed by SUNY-Binghamton, provided student experiences that will ultimately be flown in space. The AMSAT JOURNAL in recent years featured several articles concerning these projects.
Tony was elected to the AMSAT Board of Directors in 2011 following service for one year as a BoD alternate. Him wise counsel and focus on finding ways to make it affordable for AMSAT to fly amateur radio systems in space resulted in several innovative approaches. It was Tony that convinced the NASA ELaNA program to modify their qualification criteria to add “not for profits” to those that could apply for launch grants. It was Tony that met with universities that were looking for ways to fly their payloads but didn’t have the experience to build satellites, encouraging collaboration that would benefit both AMSAT and the university.
Tony Monteiro AA2TX – SETI League
Tony’s approach to participation in the AMSAT Leadership Team reflected his approach to life. Whenever he had a thought to share with the entire AMSAT Board of Directors and/or Senior Officers via e-mail, he always started with “Dear Friends”.
As AMSAT VP-Operations Drew Glasbrenner, KO4MA noted, “I always admired how he reminded me we were all friends despite whatever argument was raging.”
Arrangements for a service for Tony will be announced at a later date. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to Radio Amateur Satellite Corp. (AMSAT), 850 Sligo Avenue, Suite 600, Silver Spring, MD 20910.
Barry A. Baines, WD4ASW
President-Radio Amateur Satellite Corp. (AMSAT)
[AMSAT-UK thanks ANS and AMSAT President Barry Baines, WD4ASW for the above information]
Watch Tony Monteiro AA2TX in the HamRadioNow Fox-1 interview recorded May 19, 2013
On Saturday, March 29, at around 10:00 GMT Chris Stubbs M6EDF will be launching a balloon CHEAPO carrying a payload transmitting 50 bps 7n2 RTTY on 434.300 MHz USB.
Chris gave a well received presentation on high altitude balloons at a recent Chelmsford Amateur Radio Society (CARS) Skills Workshop. His latest launch will take place from Danbury Common at around 10 AM on Saturday, March 29.
The CARS amateur radio skills workshops are held on the 3rd Monday of each month at the Danbury Village Hall, CM3 4NQ. The Skills Workshops are open to all, and there’s no charge for attending. For details, and to sign up for email updates, see http://www.hamskills.co.uk/
To find out more about amateur radio and the Chelmsford training courses speak to Clive G1EUC on
Tel: 01245-224577
Mob: 07860-418835
Email: training2014 at g0mwt.org.uk
Web: http://www.g0mwt.org.uk/training/
The March 2014 edition of the British Amateur Television Club (BATC) magazine CQ-TV has several articles on HamTV, the new ISS Digital Amateur Television station.
In the March 2014 issue of CQ-TV:
– First Video received from the ISS
– Receiving HamTV from the ISS – Two User stories
– Details of BATC CAT14
– Three New Repeaters on air
– Using the Raspberry Pi to Control an Ultram VCO
– Versatile Audio AGC Circuit
– Digital ATV – Using a Spectrum Analyzer
– 70cm Yagi
– Classic circuits – Remote control using DMTF
A greetings message from the President of the Republic of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaitė has been transmitted by the amateur radio satellite LituanicaSAT-1. She is believed to be the first President of any nation to have a greetings message sent from space since President Eisenhower in 1958.
Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė – Image Augustas Didzgalvis
In 2013 the President of the Republic of Lithuania, Dalia Grybauskaitė visited the Science Communication and Information Center (SCIC) at Vilnius University. There she saw the amateur radio CubeSat LituanicaSAT-1. Using a handheld radio and the call sign LY5N she transmitted through the satellite’s FM voice transponder.
Her words “Greetings to all Lithuanians around the world” were recorded on a memory chip in the satellite and the message was successfully transmitted from space on March 22, 2014 at 04:17:38 UT.
LituanicaSAT-1 was launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on January 9, 2014 and was deployed with other amateur radio satellites on February 28.
The tiny satellite is just 10x10x10 cm with a mass of 1.090 kg yet it has a VGA camera and a 145/435 MHz FM voice transponder, designed and built by Lithuanian radio amateurs.
The prototype of the FM repeater has been operating in the home of its designer Žilvinas Batisa LY3H in Elektrėnai, Lithuania. Further information at http://ly3h.epalete.com/?p=303
Watch President Dalia Grybauskaitė’s greetings message being transmitted from space
Watch President Dalia Grybauskaitė and LituanicaSAT-1
The BAA Radio Astronomy Group will be holding its 2014 General Meeting on Saturday, May 17 at the National Space Centre, Leicester, LE4 5NS.
Paul Hyde G4CSD writes:
1. Demos and posters
With seven weeks to go we need to sort out the amount of space to be allocated for seating versus displays. If you are coming along to this event (NSC, Leicester, Saturday, May 17) and have something that you would like to exhibit in the lunchtime and tea intervals please let me know immediately by direct mail.
This could be hardware or poster material, or combinations of both. The electrically noisy environment of the NSC will limit live demonstrations but people always like see to hardware, whilst results and photographs from other people’s work can provoke ideas and encourage experimentation.
2. Filter alignment
If there is sufficient interest we have had a kind offer from Ian Lever to bring along equipment for measuring the performance of passive filters for hydrogen line receivers. The equipment is heavy and bulky so it is only worth doing this if there are several people who can make use of the opportunity. Conversely, Ian does not want to miss out on the main event so there will be a maximum of six slots, based on those making bookings before the day. Please note that this will be for checking performance only as there will not be time to do any alignment work. If you are interested, please contact me immediately so that we can decide whether to go ahead with this or not.
3. Ticket availability
Please note that two thirds of the tickets have already been sold and there is a piece in this month’s Astronomy Now, plus one in the next Sky at Night magazine, so I’m still expecting that tickets will not be available at the door. If you want further information about the event and the talks, or details of how to buy tickets, go to the RAG website at http://www.britastro.org/radio/
Supporting papers so far offered are: an ultra-low cost Hydrogen Line radio telescope (Peter East); the modelling of our local galactic topology (Gordon Dennis); the roles of Australian no deposit casinos in the growing online economy of Australia and New Zealand and on top of that, the comparethebets make an excellent list each year; the design of an Arduino-based magnetometer (Jonathan Rawlinson M0ZJO); making and analysing observations with Starbase (Laurence Newell); experiments with a small SDR radio telescope (David Morgan 2W0CXV); and reports on developments at EAARO (Jason Williams M0YJW) and the Harold Clayton Observatory (Dave James).
Tickets for the event cost £12 for BAA members and £15 for non-members, including free parking at the NSC and free admission to the main attraction, excluding the Planetarium show. Tea and coffee will be provided during the breaks but lunch is not included. Delegates are welcome to bring their own lunch or the NSC shop (Boosters) sells a range of sandwiches and other refreshments. It would help the NSC if you could also note the number of people in your party that are likely to use Boosters when you book tickets.
AMSAT-UK 
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