Tag Archives: Amateur Radio

Oct 28 2011

Prospero 40th Anniversary

Attempts are being made to reactivate Prospero, the United Kingdom’s first satellite launched on a UK-built rocket, Black Arrow, on October 28, 1971. It is hoped Amateur Radio operators will be able to provide recordings of the signals on 137.560 MHz.

On October 19, Roger M0RJA provided details of tests to be carried out over the following two weeks:

Some of you may have heard that a team in the UK are trying to re-contact an old British launched satellite for the anniversary of its launch (28th October 1971).

We’ve been given a licence to transmit [on the 148.25MHz command uplink] and will be testing our re-engineered ground-segment in the next fortnight.  The passes we are going to concentrate on will be as far out west as possible, as to minimise QRM from Europe.  Earth is a lot more EM noisy than it was in 1971.

If anyone wants to try and tune in to the downlink, you can help ID any response we get from the old bird. To avoid interference the downlink is only planned to be active when the satellite is in range of the United Kingdom. The passes [times UK local = GMT+1] are summarised here:

https://public.sheet.zoho.com/public/rjaduthie/prospero-passes-in-the-next-fortnight

There are other passes, though these are the ones which are out west.  We’ll see how we do.

Update Oct 23:   A recording would be grand.  We may have heard something on Friday [Oct 21], though we’re still piecing together what we can expect.  If recordings are made of the times when Prospero is to pass then we can get an idea of what everyone is hearing now.

On Friday we listened to a complete pass and definitely heard something different when Prospero was in our vicinity.  Whether this was coincidence with some QRM we don’t know.  As long as others aren’t transmitting at the same time as us on the Prospero frequencies, we have a reasonable chance to apply the scientific method to be certain of what we’re listening to.

We probably won’t make another attempt till Monday [Oct 24] – and we will probably try the passes at around 1800. [UK Local (GMT+1)]

There is information on this on the AMSAT-UK site front page:  this includes the passes we’ve marked out for definite attempts (we may try others) and there are some archived recordings of Prospero to compare to.

Roger J A Duthie M0RJA
Email: rjad at mssl.ucl.ac.uk

N2YO Prospero predictions http://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=5580
VK3UKF Prospero real-time oribtal tracking http://www.vk3ukf.com/Space/GadgetSatProspero.htm

ITN TV news video of Prospero http://www.itnsource.com/shotlist//ITN/1971/10/28/FS281071001/

Audio recordings of the 0.3 watt phase modulated signal with 2048 bit/s PCM from Prospero on 137.560 MHz can be heard on the Sounds from Space site of Matthias Bopp DD1US http://www.dd1us.de/spacesounds%204.html

Experiments on the Prospero satellite
http://www.uk.amsat.org/2011/09/08/experiments-on-the-prospero-satellite/

Plan to revive 1970s UK satellite on 137.560 MHz
http://www.uk.amsat.org/2011/09/05/1970s-uk-satellite-to-be-revived/

Wiki – Prospero http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospero_%28satellite%29

John Wright G4DMF says the Prospero satellite was featured in a BBC show called “Coast” Series 2 Episode 1 Dover to Isle of White. The item titled ‘Isle of Wight – UK’s Space Race of the 60’s’ showed an attempt to receive the signals using what appeared to be an AR2000. The show also dealt with the research into the propellants, and the launch from Australia. http://www.bbc.co.uk/coast/programmes2/01-dover-wight.shm
 Roger M0RJA says he thinks that what was received on Coast was almost certainly an Orbcomm transmission. Orbcomm was assigned the Prospero frequency.

OSCAR News is published quarterly by AMSAT-UK and posted to members.
To get your copy join AMSAT-UK online at http://tinyurl.com/JoinAMSAT-UK/
Free sample issue at http://www.uk.amsat.org/on_193_final.pdf

Oct 28 2011

APRS Pass Predictor

On the AMSAT bulletin board Lynn KJ4ERJ reports the initial keps for the CubeSats launched today October 28 have been loaded into the APRS pass predictor:

For APRS users, to get a pass prediction for your QTH, make sure you’ve beaconed your position recently then send a message to one of the following “stations” and you should receive information on the next (or current) pass:

SAT99999 or DICEY
SAT99998 or DICEF
SAT99997 or RAX2
SAT99996 (Mixed case sat names are not yet supported)
SAT99995 or E1PU2
SAT99994 (Mixed case sat names are not yet supported)

For more information on the satellite pass auto-responder, please see http://aprsisce.wikidot.com/doc:satsrv

Lynn (D) – KJ4ERJ – Author of APRSISCE for Windows Mobile and Win32

PS.  Yes, you can also send an APRS message to ISS or AO51 to receive pass predictions for those satellites as well.

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

Oct 26 2011

Korean EME Test with FUNcube Dongle

HL2/F4AAR has made available a video of an EME test using the AMSAT-UK FUNcube Dongle SDR during the ARRL EME 2011 Contest.

Read about it in Google English on the HL2UVH Blog with pictures http://tinyurl.com/3eqkjq3

Watch ARRL EME Contest October 2011 – HL2UVH DS4EOI HL1QAR 6K2EJJ HL2/F4AAR

Watch Single 13 ele Yagi ARRL EME October 2011.

Join the FUNcube Yahoo Group at http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/FUNcube/

Oct 18 2011

AubieSat-1 Video

Auburn University’s famous battle cry, “War Eagle”, will be heard from space Oct. 27 when it is transmitted to Earth from a student-built amateur radio satellite known as AubieSat-1.

After launch when the satellite comes over Auburn, Alabama, the team will send up a command and if all is well AubieSat-1 will reply with “War Eagle” in Morse code.

AubieSat-1 is designed to transmit with a power of about 800 milliwatts on a frequency of 437.475 MHz, plus or minus Doppler correction [+/- 9 kHz]. The beacon signal, along with telemetry, will be sent using A1A continuous wave Morse code at 20 words per minute. Additional telemetry from the onboard science experiment will use CW transmissions up to 60 WPM.

The AubieSat team from Auburn University have released a video about the project which features radio amateurs such as J-M Wersinger KI4YAU and Kyle Owen KK4ANG.

Watch the AubieSat-1 Project Video

Auburn University – AubieSat-1 http://ocm.auburn.edu/featured_story/aubiesat.html

Wiki – Auburn University War Eagle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Eagle

Oct 16 2011

CW SRM Nanosat decoding software

The CubeSat Project Team in the University of Khartoum have made available software to decode the telemetry beacon of the new Amateur Radio satellite built by the SRM University.

The Telemetry Decoding Software was developed by University students for studying the University of Khartoum CubeSat (KN-SAT1) telemetry data. It has now been modified to handle SRMVU data

Download the software at http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7PWS7GEA

SRMSAT http://srmsat.in/

Good signals received from SRMSAT and JUGNU
http://www.uk.amsat.org/2011/10/12/good-signals-received-from-srmsat-and-jugnu/

Oct 15 2011

Radio Amateurs thanked for Jugnu reports

The Jugnu team say the continuous stream of satellite beacon reports from Radio Amateurs across the world surpassed all their expectations. The team welcome further reports.

On the AMSAT bulletin board Chintalagiri Shashank writes:

I’m the system engineer for the Jugnu nanosatellite project. This is the nanosatellite which is more generally known on this list as JNU, since that was the identifier sent along with the TLE. I’ve been lurking on this list for the past couple of years, ever since we started working on the nanosatellite. I did learn a lot from occasionally perusing through the posts here. Not being a licensed HAM myself, I apologize for intruding into your space here today.

On behalf of the entire Jugnu team, I’d like to thank all of you for the beacon reports you’ve sent our way, both on the list as well as through Mani (VU2WMY). Its been a long couple of years on the project, but the last few days have been a much more intense roller coaster ride. The continuous stream of beacon reports from across the world surpassed all of our expectations, and were the mainstay of our emotional support while we were having difficulties recieving the beacon ourselves. If I do get to meet any of you in person, the beer’s on me.

The telemetry gathered by HAMs across the world has been extremely useful in our analysis of the spacecraft’s condition. I hope to be able to release, at least partially, the details of the format for the beacon string in a couple of days. In the meanwhile, we welcome any additional telemetry that you can send our way. Even information about the AOS/LOS has been very useful in trying to figure out where exactly the satellite is.

NORAD / celestrak has released 5 TLE’s tagged with the PSLV C-18 launch (2011-058<A-E>). We arent yet sure which one, if any, is Jugnu. We do know that SRMSat is one of the cluster of 3 objects (B,C,D). We’ve been able to recieve our beacon when we attempt to track C, but the signal strength is low and we generally see it clearly only near AOS. Due to reasons I’m probably not allowed to discuss in public, we have reason to believe that Jugnu is moving away from the other objects (SRMSat, VesselSat, and until later today, MT) at a velocity of approximately 1.5 to 3 meters per second since separation from LV. We expect this velocity to be tangential to the orbit. If you’re trying to track Jugnu, I would suggest that for the moment, C is a good starting point, and it may be better to track a little ahead of
it. We will be trying to do the same in some of the later passes ourselves.

In the case of SRMSat, we’ve had good signals at object B until earlier today, but we think that C did a better job of it in the last decent pass we had earlier this evening, about 6 hours ago.

I’d be more than delighted to try and answer any questions you may have about Jugnu, so please feel free to contact me on or off list if you would like to know more about it.

Thanks and Regards,

Chintalagiri Shashank

Head, System Integration and Electronic Hardware Design,
Jugnu Nanosatellite Project
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
Blog: http://blog.chintal.in/
Email: shashank.chintalagiri at gmail.com

JUGNU 437.275 MHz reports should be sent to
wmy@isac.gov.in
shantag@iitk.ac.in
Web: http://www.iitk.ac.in/me/jugnu/index.htm

SRMSAT 437.425 MHz reports should be sent to KC2YQJ <at> arrl.net
Web: http://srmsat.in/srmvu.html

Note due to the 20 degree inclination orbit these satellites are not receivable in high latitude countries such as the United Kingdom.

Getting started on Amateur Radio Satellites PDF
http://www.uk.amsat.org/2011/05/09/getting-started-on-amateur-radio-satellites/