South Charleston High School – Near Space Satellite
The Miami Herald reports on the education work of radio amateurs Jeffrey Imel K9ESE and Joseph Oliver AA4KK. They are helping high school students to develop a balloon launched satellite.
Educators generally agree that hands-on activities are the best way to get kids interested in these disciplines, which are becoming increasingly important in the 21st century.
Tiffany Grigsby, an 11th-grader who is working on the satellites, is one of the students who needs no convincing. She wants to go into aerospace or aeronautical engineering in college and maybe work for NASA. For her, the satellite project is the ideal science project.
“I love outer space,” she said. “The unknown is so interesting. You don’t know a lot about it, and I’m here to learn … building a satellite is the perfect thing.”
Grigsby is a self-professed hands-on learner. She doubts she could learn how to build a satellite from a book, but she knows she’ll emerge from this class with those skills.
“And then it’s not just that you know what’s in there, it’s that you understand what’s in there.”
Following the IARU Region 2 (the Americas) meeting in September at Cancun, Mexico, the new Region 2 bandplans for all allocations from 137 kHz to 250 GHz have now been published.
There is a new allocation for the Amateur-Satellite Service from 144.000-144.025 MHz
There is also a reference to NSS – Near Space Stations in the definitions section. This is believed to be the first mention of High Altitude Balloons in any amateur radio band plan document. It says
NSS – Near Space Stations: Equipment located in temporary Near Space Stations (such as those carried by High Altitude Balloons) can transmit carefully on any frequency; exceptions are the segments with “exclusive” usage where “NSS” are not applied. NSS must follow the BW and mode restrictions of the segment and observe carefully the usual occupation of the band on the related region to avoid harmful interference. For longer missions and NSS crossing international and regional boundaries, extra care must be observed in harmonization of different allocations.
On Saturday, October 19, at 2302 UT Hector Martinez CO6CBF achieved what is possibly the first amateur radio contact between Cuba and the UK on the FO-29 satellite.
Hector Martinez CO6CBF operated from the roof of an apartment block
Hector writes:
I am pleased to report that I had my first contact on satellites with the UK.
Peter Atkins G4DOL (IO80so) and I (EL92sd) completed a contact successfully on FO-29. It is the result of a long history which began six months ago.
We tried several times but Peter never could hear below a degree toward my location. I have the same problem in my home station and I usually go to specific spots to try these kinds of contacts. So, I suggested him assemble a portable station to operate from a better spot. He did so and his first smoke test was on October 15th, we almost completed a contact but Peter could not hear my report; I couldn’t reach a good spot due to the rain. Yesterday, I went to a very tall building, I got access to the building `s top and operated from there. Actually, it is a very good spot, it allowed me a great horizon visibility toward Europe; I was able to work FO-29 until -1.5 degrees.
Peter Atkins G4DOL operated portable from a high location
We had a very narrow window but there was enough time to exchange reports, grids and greetings. Our maximum elevation was 1.1 degrees. I believe it is the first contact between UK and Cuba on FO-29! It is a 7286 km contact, a new grid and new country for us!
Please, note that our success was on the 2301z pass, it was very late in the night for Peter. He had to load his car with antennas, radio, a battery and drive five miles from his home looking for a good spot in the windy and dark coast. He was running 50W into a 10 elements Yagi and was using 19 elements Yagi for the downlink; He mounted both antennas on a big tripod and had to manage with a “heavy weigh”. Needless to say that Peter did the difficult part and a very good job!
I was running a FT-817nd, a 50W homebrew power amplifier and ELK antenna. Everything was supplied by a 12V 7A Gel battery. I was operating Half-Duplex but we ran the frequency calculations based on the great feature implemented on SatPC32 V12.8b. So, it was very easy to find each other in the pass band. It was my 8th transatlantic contact with Europe on FO-29!
Right Now, FO-29 has a big footprint. Please, if you are into the footprint and want to try a long distance contact, just drop me an email. I will try until complete a contact with you. Unfortunately, Cubans cannot operate on AO-7B; FO-29 is our only chance for DX contacts.
Thanks very much to Peter for this exciting contact!
73!
Hector, CO6CBF
El92sd
Listen to a recording of the contact between CO6CBF and G4DOL
50DollarSat (A.K.A. $50SAT or Eagle-2) is a PocketQube micro satellite made from commercial electronic components and designed to fit in a 50 mm cube.
The primary purpose of the project was to create a cost effective platform for engineering and science students to use for developing real world skills. The PocketQube form factor has no precision mechanical parts and can be built from locally obtained sheet metal.
50DollarSat is comprised of two 40 mm x 40 mm circuit boards. The first is the processor/radio board which contains the PICaxe 40X2 processor programmed in PICaxe basic, the Hope RFM22B single chip radio and some peripheral devices. The PICaxe 40X2 is an easy to use micro controller popular in the education sector.
The second board is the power control and monitor board. This board contains four maximum power point controllers, one for each solar array on each side of the spacecraft as well as current monitors for the battery and summed solar power. The battery is a common 3.7V lithium ion camera battery.
The satellite will transmit data telemetry about the satellites operation, a sequence of call signs in slow FM Morse and some key data as fast FM Morse (120 WPM). The main data payload will also be transmitted as FSK RTTY which should be readily heard on the ground with basic amateur radio equipment.
50DollarSat (Eagle-2) has been a collaborative education project between Professor Bob Twiggs, KE6QMD, Morehead State University and three other radio amateurs, Howie DeFelice, AB2S, Michael Kirkhart, KD8QBA, and Stuart Robinson, GW7HPW.
50DollarSat will be one of PocketQubes and CubeSats which will be carried by the UniSat-5 microsatellite. It is due to launch in November from a Russian Dnepr silo launched rocket at Dombarovsky near Yasny. UniSat-5 will be released into a sun synchronous 700km orbit. After deployment UniSat-5 will then release its CubeSats and PocketQubes.
CAMSAT CAS-2 at Friedrichshafen Ham Radio 2012 Event
CAMSAT developed the linear transponder amateur radio payload on the CAS-1 (aka XW-1, HO-68) satellite which proved very popular with radio amateurs world-wide. Since then they have been working with students at the Qian Youth Space Academy on the next satellites CAS-2 A1 and A2.
Operators BA1EO, BA1DU, BA4TA, BA4TB, BA4RN, BA4WI, BA4ALC, BH4RQU, BH4REQ, BD5RV, BA7CK, BA9GA, BA9TX, BD9GQ, and BG0GE will operate in the contest of the CAMSAT DX Party from the 19th to the 28th as BJ9TA (VHF, including the ARRL EME Contest (Oct. 26/27)) and as BY9GA/9 (HF, CQ WW DX SSB Contest).
Fan Shaomin BA1EO with CAS-2 A1
QTH is Dunhuang, in the north-west (CQ zone 23).
QRV on 160m-70cm with 4 stations.
QSLs via Gong Wancong BA1DU
Gong Wancong BA1DU led the CAMSAT delegation to Ham Radio 2012 in Friedrichshafen.
The UK newspaper the Daily Mail reports on a Glasgow-based start-up Alba Orbital which has recently begun creating and selling the building blocks for tiny satellites named ‘PocketQubes’
AMSAT-UK 
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