Tag Archives: Amateur Radio

Jan 8 2012

Hams Asked To Help Encourage Home Construction

Diane Bruce VA3DB

Diane Bruce VA3DB

The AMSAT News Service reports that Diane Bruce, VA3DB, is asking radio amateurs to help with a new website and mailing list devoted to home construction projects.

If you are currently a ham radio builder, or interested in becoming one, the Hamradio-builder mailing list has been created with you in mind.

Diane Bruce VA3DB says of the list, “A recent look at some old 73 Magazines brought to mind the simple projects this magazine produced. So my thought was to do something similar, but meant for the web instead of dead tree. I am not talking a full fledged magazine, but a website where we can put simple beginner type articles, with copious photos and good instructions. We hope it will become a bit like Maker Magazine but for the radio amateur.”

A few of us have written and edited amateur radio articles. She is proposing for the moment that we clean up or write a few articles suitable for beginners to start the content for this community.

List members have already proposed topics on homebrew test equipment, and antennas. Amateur radio satellite operators have skill and many ideas, construction projects, and techniques to get beginners on-the-air at VHF, UHF, and microwave frequencies.

The project is just getting started. If you are interested in joining this community you can sign up for the list at:

http://diana.db.net/mailman/listinfo/hamradio-builder

Watch the video – The DIY Magic of Amateur Radio http://www.uk.amsat.org/3158
A Hi-Res 480 MB version of the DIY Magic DVD can be downloaded from http://p1k.arrl.org/pub/pr/
73 Magazine PDF’s from 1960-2003 can be downloaded from http://tinyurl.com/73Magazine
Make Magazine article http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/05/collapsible-fabric-yagi-antenna.html

Electronic home construction (DIY) is undergoing a boom with Maker and Hacker groups springing up everywhere. Hackspaces are places where people meet up to carry out constructional projects, see http://hackspace.org.uk/

Jan 7 2012

Triton-1 and Triton-2

Dnepr_rocket_lift-off

A DNEPR Lift-Off

Triton-1 and Triton-2 are expected to launch in late 2012 on a DNEPR from Yasny together with UKube-1, Delfi n3Xt, Trio-Cinema 1 & 2 and other spacecraft using frequencies in the amateur satellite service.

They are 3U Cubesats and each carries a radio science mission that aims to test an experimental advanced AIS (Automatic Identification System) receiver.

Telemetry decoding software will be made available which will allow radio amateur operators to listen to periodic downlink broadcasts containing housekeeping telemetry, payload telemetry as well as received AIS messages.

Triton-1 telemetry downlinks will be 9k6 RC-BPSK on VHF(145MHz). It includes two similar secondary amateur radio payloads, being two single channel mode U/V (435-145MHz) FM to DSB transponders. The following downlink frequencies have been coordinated for Triton-1: Main Downlink 145.815MHz & Backup Downlink 145.860MHz. Possibly (power budget permitting), both transponders may be switched on at the same time.

Triton-2 telemetry downlinks will be 9k6 RC-BPSK on VHF(145MHz) and 38k4 RC-BPSK on S Band (2400MHz). The satellite includes two secondary amateur radio payloads:

– A single channel mode U/V (435-145MHz) FM to DSB transponder.
– A single channel mode U/S (435-2400MHz) FM to FM transponder.

The following downlink frequencies have been coordinated for Triton-2: Main Downlink 145.860MHz & Backup Downlink 145.815MHz. The S-band downlink will be 2408.00MHz. Possibly (power budget permitting), both payloads may be switched on at the same time.

Mission duration
Science mission: 3 Months
Amateur radio mission: as long as possible after the science mission finishes.

AIS – E-Navigation http://www.efficiensea.org/files/conferenceproceedings.pdf

ISIS PowerPoint slides http://www.space-lt.eu/failai/Prezentacijos/Abe%20Bonnema_Developing%20and%20Launching%20CubeSat%20Missions.pdf

IARU Amateur Satellite Frequency Coordination

Jan 7 2012

CubeSats Feature in Sat Magazine

The January issue of the free publication Sat Magazine covers a number of amateur radio satellites.

On pages 54-65 is an article about Small Satellites. Among the many amateur radio satellites mentioned are FITSAT-1, WE WISH, the Vega CubeSats, QB50, AubieSat-1, Prime Explorer-1, FASTRAC.and ARISSat-1/KEDR. The AMSAT-India 435/145MHz Linear Transponder is also mentioned.

Download the January Sat Magazine from http://www.satmagazine.com/2012/SM_Jan_2012.pdf

Sat Magazine http://www.satmagazine.com/

Jan 5 2012

FUNcube at Association for Science Education Conference

Graham Shirville G3VZV on AMSAT-UK Stand at ASE

Graham Shirville G3VZV on the AMSAT-UK Stand

The 3 day Association for Science Education Conference opened in Liverpool on Thursday, January 5.

AMSAT-UK have a stand at the conference to show the potential of the FUNcube satellite as a teaching tool.

The FUNcube project aims to boost young people’s interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

When FUNcube-1 is launched this Autumn school students will be able to receive the satellite data stream which contains telemetry — things like battery voltages and solar panel currents — and from this they’ll be able to deduce things like the spin rate of the satellite, and what happens to temperatures when it goes into or out of eclipse.

Additionally students will be able to send, via a moderator, ‘Fitter’ (as in ‘FUNcube Twitter’) messages of 200 characters to the satellite.  FUNcube-1 will then transmit them down to Earth on its 1200 bps BPSK beacon.

The event takes place at the University of Liverpool from January 5-7. Admission to the exhibition is free, details at http://www.ase.org.uk/

 

Jan 4 2012

FUNcube-1 ZDNET Article

Jim Heck G3WGM on an AMSAT-UK Stand

Jim Heck G3WGM

Journalist David Meyer interviewed AMSAT-UK’s Jim Heck G3WGM for an article on the FUNcube-1 satellite being built by AMSAT-UK volunteers.

School students will be able to send, via a moderator, ‘Fitter’ (as in ‘FUNcube Twitter’) messages of 200 characters to the CubeSat. FUNcube-1 will then transmit them on the 1200 bps BPSK beacon.

Read the article at http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/emerging-tech/2012/01/04/radio-amateurs-prep-launch-of-tiny-funcube-satellite-40094737/

The satellite will carry a 500 milliwatt 435 to 145 MHz linear transponder for SSB and CW communications.

FUNcube – Launch details and time frame finalised

FUNcube to be on show at the Association for Science Education conference Jan 5-7, 2012

Jan 4 2012

ARISSat-1 SK

ARISSat-1 Logo

The amateur radio satellite ARISSat-1, deployed from the ISS on August 3, fell silent on Wednesday, January 4, as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere.

The ARISSat website shows the last telemetry was captured at 06:02:14 UTC on Jan. 4  with these temperatures:

IHU PCB    75°C
PSU     76°C
RF     88°C
Batt     55°C
RF Enc 67°C

The full telemetry data can be seen at http://www.arissat1.org/

Mike Repprecht DK3WN reports that Tetsurou Satou JA0CAW captured telemetry at 05:59 UTC. Mike says it’s remarkable that the last voice message heard was from Yuri Gagarin. See the last data on Mike’s SatBlog http://www.dk3wn.info/p/?p=25125 The JA0CAW Blog in Google English is at http://tinyurl.com/74q5o6g

Konstantin Vladimirovich RN3ZF listened for the satellite at 08:42 UTC using an AMSAT-UK FUNcube Dongle with WRplus. On the FUNcube Yahoo Group he says “the telemetry was absent, voice messages were not legible, very silent and interrupted. Most likely, I saw last minutes in the life of the satellite.” He continued monitoring but did not detect any further signals from the satellite. He has made available his final ARISSat-1 recordings in WRPlus format at:
http://doris.kiev.ua/rn3zf/kedr/
http://doris.kiev.ua/rn3zf/kedr/WRplus_20120104_084230Z_145940kHz.wav
http://doris.kiev.ua/rn3zf/kedr/WRplus_20120104_085129Z_145940kHz.wav
Note the files are large.

Education has been a large part of the ARISSat project and on the FUNcube Yahoo Group Simon Kennedy G0FCU says he was glad he was able to receive good signals and SSTV pictures last week for his daughter to take to school as part of her project on Space.

Listen to a recording by Mineo Wakita JE9PEL made at 01:22-01:27 UTC, Jan 4, 2012, Ele 7 W-WN-N, 145.950MHz FM over Japan when it would have been at an altitude of about 175 km http://www.ne.jp/asahi/hamradio/je9pel/20104ar2.mp3

A graph showing the descent of ARISSat-1 can be seen at http://www.qsl.net/py4zbz/arissat.htm#r 

SSTV pictures taken by ARISSat-1 can be seen at http://www.amsat.org/amsat/ariss/SSTV/

AMSAT Bulletin Board (AMSAT-BB) http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/tools/maillist/

Dec. 30 – ARISSat-1 Getting Hotter: http://www.uk.amsat.org/2011/12/30/arissat-1-getting-hotter/