Tag Archives: Amateur Radio

Jan 2 2014

UK ‘DIY space kit shop’ on Yahoo News

Tom Walkinshaw Founder and CEO of Alba Orbital

Tom Walkinshaw Founder and CEO of Alba Orbital

Yahoo News have published an interview with entrepreneur Tom Walkinshaw, 24, who is opening a ‘DIY space kit shop’.

He hopes it will start a new, “DIY space race” with satellites available for as little as £12,000 ($18,000) which rises to £20,000 ($30,000) when you include the cost of launch into orbit.

“We never used to have PC’s in every University/School, but now a classroom without them is unthinkable,” Walkinshaw told Yahoo News this week.

“Just last month the first high school got their satellite into orbit – Imagine the economic and technological multiplier effect if every University and High School followed in their footsteps. You could do it for less than the cost of a teacher/lecturer for a year.”

Read the Yahoo interview at
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/the-diy-space-race–british-“satellite-shop”-opens—selling-spacecraft-for-£12-000–112223414.html

PocketQube Shop http://www.pocketqubeshop.com/

Dec 29 2013

Hillbilly Tracking for Low Earth Orbit Satellites

Travis Goodspeed KK4VCZ at 30th Chaos Computer Congress

Travis Goodspeed KK4VCZ at 30th Chaos Computer Congress

In this video Travis Goodspeed KK4VCZ describes his Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite tracking system to the 30th Chaos Computer Congress which took place December 27-30, 2013 at the Congress Center Hamburg in Germany.

LEO Satellite Tracker - Credit Travis Goodspeed KK4VCZ

LEO Satellite Tracker – Credit Travis Goodspeed KK4VCZ

The YouTube description reads:

Satellites in Low Earth Orbit have tons of nifty signals, but they move quickly though the sky and are difficult to track with fine accuracy. This lecture describes a remotely operable satellite tracking system that the author built from a Navy-surplus Inmarsat dish in Southern Appalachia.

The entire system is controlled through a Postgres database, fed by various daemons spread across multiple machines. So when I click on a satellite on my laptop or cellphone, it runs “UPDATE target SET name=’Voyager 1′;” and the motor daemon then begins to track the new target while the prediction daemon maintains accurate estimates of its position in the sky.

Additional daemons take spectral prints or software-defined radio recordings of the targeted object for later review.

Watch 30c3: Hillbilly Tracking of Low Earth Orbit

There is a description of the system on Travis Goodspeed’s Blog at http://travisgoodspeed.blogspot.co.uk/

Other 30c3 videos available at http://www.youtube.com/user/albertveli/videos

30th Chaos Computer Congress https://events.ccc.de/congress/2013/wiki/Main_Page

Dec 28 2013

Lithuanian CubeSats launch next month

LY2013SAT QSL card received by Andy Thomas G0SFJ

LY2013SAT QSL card received by Andy Thomas G0SFJ

To celebrate the upcoming launch of LituanicaSAT-1 the special event station LY2013SAT operated by Vilmantas Morkunas LY3BY has been on the air. Andy Thomas G0SFJ was one of the those who worked it and he was rewarded with a QSL card showing LituanicaSAT-1 in space.

Kibo Robot Arm CubeSat Deployment

Kibo Robot Arm CubeSat Deployment

Two Lithuanian amateur radio satellites will be among the 32 CubeSats to be sent by Nanoracks LLC to the International Space Station (ISS) on the SpaceX CRS-3 mission in January, 2014.

They will be deployed from the ISS by the JEM Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (J-SSOD) of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

The Kaunas University of Technology developed LituanicaSAT-1 and the Lithuanian Space Federation developed LitSat-1. It is understood that both will carry amateur radio transponders.

The satellites were built in 2013 which was the 80th anniversary of the historic flight by Lithuanian pilots Steponas Darius and Stasys Girėnas in the airplane Lituanica. On July 15, 1933, they took off from Floyd Bennett Field in New York and flew across the Atlantic Ocean, covering a distance of 6,411 kilometers without landing, in 37 hours and 11 minutes. Tragically they crashed by the village of Kuhdamm, near Soldin, Germany just 650 km from their destination of Kaunas in Lithuania.

The IARU coordinated frequencies for the two CubeSats are:

LituanicaSAT-1
• FM Transponder Uplink 145.950 MHz Downlink 435.180 MHz
• AX25 Uplink 145.850 MHz AX25 Downlink 437.550 MHz
• CW Beacon 437.275 MHz
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Lituanicasat1

LitSat-1
• SSB Transponder Uplink 435.180 MHz Downlink 145.950 MHz
• AX25 Uplink 437.550 MHz Downlink 145.850 MHz
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/palydovas

Google English article on the two Lithuanian CubeSats http://tinyurl.com/LithuanianCubeSats

1933 Lituanica flight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanica

Dec 28 2013

WebSDR for 434 and 1296 MHz

23cm_WebSDR_Antenna_up_mastFor those of you out of range of the flotilla of 434 MHz balloons launched on Saturday, December 28, you can still receive the USB signals!

Noel G8GTZ, Martin G8JNJ and Phil M0DNY from the Southampton University Wireless Society, have recently set up a Microwave WebSDR near Basingstoke in the UK. It currently supports parts of the 23cm and 70cm bands, (2m is a work-in-progress) and can be listened to from anywhere in the world.

The link is: http://websdr.suws.org.uk/

A couple of notes when using the websdr:

– Please set your location in dl-fldigi to somewhere around 51.294, -1.131 so we don’t have any fake receiver lines on the map!

– Connection to the site is over a several km wifi link, so once you’ve found the signal, please switch off your waterfall view (Set to ‘blind’) to save bandwidth for others.

– The waterfall speed will also be automatically limited as the number of users increases.

Enjoy!
Phil M0DNY

Frequencies of 434 MHz USB balloons going aloft on Superlaunch Saturday, Dec 28 can be seen at
http://ukhas.org.uk/ukhas:superlaunchsat

Real time tracking of the balloons at http://spacenear.us/tracker/

Beginners Guide to Tracking using dl-fldigi http://ukhas.org.uk/guides:tracking_guide

Slow Scan Digital Video (SSDV) Guide http://ukhas.org.uk/guides:ssdv

Check the #highaltitude IRC channel for chat about the launches
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=highaltitude

Balloon flights are always subject to last minute changes. To get up-to-date information subscribe to the UKHAS Mailing List by sending a blank email to this address:
ukhas+subscribe@googlegroups.com

Dec 27 2013

UK 434 MHz balloon aims for Poland

Archive Image - Ali Al-Azzawi M0PSI with a balloon - Credit Dave Akerman M6RPI

Archive Image – Ali Al-Azzawi M0PSI with a balloon – Credit Dave Akerman M6RPI

On “Superlaunch Saturday”, December 28 a number of 434 MHz balloon launches will take place. The radio signals from the balloons should be receivable over much of the UK.

Dave Akerman M6RPI and Anthony Stirk M0UPU plan to sent a balloon transmitting live SSDV images on 434 MHz from the UK to Poland.

The Raspberry Pi powered balloon is planned to take off at 1100 UT on Saturday from Brightwalton in Berkshire. The launch will be streamed live on the Internet.

Payload:
$$SLEET 434.400 MHz RTTY 50 7N2
$$SNOW 434.410 MHz RTTY 100 7N2
$$WANNAB1 434.420 MHz DominoEX16
$$CLOUDY 434.200 MHz RTTY 300 bps Slow Scan Digital Video (SSDV)

BATC.tv stream from the launch site
http://www.batc.tv/streams/m0upu

Streaming video from Dave M6RPI cam
http://www.batc.tv/streams/hab-o-cam

Further information at http://www.daveakerman.com/?p=1457

Other 434 MHz balloons going aloft on Superlaunch Saturday can be seen at
http://ukhas.org.uk/ukhas:superlaunchsat

Real time tracking of the balloons at http://spacenear.us/tracker/

Beginners Guide to Tracking using dl-fldigi http://ukhas.org.uk/guides:tracking_guide

Slow Scan Digital Video (SSDV) Guide http://ukhas.org.uk/guides:ssdv

Check the #highaltitude IRC channel for chat about the launches
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=highaltitude

Balloon flights are always subject to last minute changes. To get up-to-date information subscribe to the UKHAS Mailing List by sending a blank email to this address:
ukhas+subscribe@googlegroups.com

Dec 27 2013

SkySat-1 satellite sends first HD video

Ching-Yu Hu - Skybox Imaging

Ching-Yu Hu – Skybox Imaging

Skybox Imaging was founded in 2009 by radio amateur Julian Mann KI6OSO along with Ching-Yu Hu, Dan Berkenstock and John Fenwick.

Many of the Skybox Imaging executives worked on CubeSat projects while students at Stanford University under Professor Bob Twiggs KE6QMD.

SkySat-1, the first in a planned constellation of 24 microsatellites, was launched on a Dnepr from Dombarovsky near Yasny on November 21, 2013. It is believed to be the smallest satellite ever flown that is capable of capturing imagery at better than 1 meter resolution and the 1080p HD camera can capture up to 90 second video clips at 30 frames per second.

Watch World’s First High-Resolution, HD Video of Earth from Space (1080p HD)

Skybox Imaging http://www.skyboximaging.com/