WAC
Got a card via the bureau the other day and it was Canary Islands. This was the African continent card I was looking for to get my basic WAC. The next meeting I’ll get the cards confirmed and then will cut my $13 check to the league and I’ll wait for my new piece of wall paper <woot!>.
I haven’t been playing radio for a while now due to issues with being heard. I hope to move out of this radio hole in the first part of the new year. Reading up on a few new fun ideas over the last few months. I need to get off my butt and get my Extra studied and taken. Once that is over and done I can concentrate on a few other parts of the hobby that I need to address.
The new car has proven to be not an easy beast to put an antenna on, so I’m waiting right now to put that back in until I get a used truck or jeep come about the same time I plan on moving.
Computer Failure
Yesterday we had a power outage due to a bad transformer (or so I’m guessing). There was a nice explosion nearby and for the next 75 minutes or so, no power. Once power came back up the PC running the radio gear threw a few PCI errors and paused. I rebooted and it seemed to come up okay. When I returned downstairs after a few minutes away, the screen was dark. No hard drive noise can be heard and the video is in perpetually sleepy mode. So far tinkering has not succeeded in awaking the beast.
The loss of the computer can be compensated for, but I’m not 100% sure I have all the data files off it I need. There are a few ARISSat images that I know I did not back up yet, and the audio files are over there. My Logbook may or may not be fully uploaded to ARRL, I think so, so I hopefully can pull down what I had not already shifted to the Windows7 box.
Could this be the absolute point where I move the radio to the G4 Mac? This could very well be.
ARISSat-1 20:55 CDT 17 Aug, 2011
Tonight’s ARISSat-1 SSTV image. Could have been a bit cleaner, but this was an unattended pass, so I didn’t control the dopplar that was going on. But still a decent image of one of the space side cameras.
ARISSat-1 9:33pm CDT pass
Here’s the audio file and the photo for the 9:33pm CDT pass over EM48
Audio File link below.
QTH stays
Even with the bad radio reception and transmission we decided to stay here at the townhouse. Moving in the middle of August is just a mess, and the complex management agreed to actually FIX the problem. Imagine that. So my stickers I made for QSL cards can still be used.
ARISSat-1 07:06cdt 6 Aug 2011
SSTV image captured this morning on the pass
Antenna: J-Pole on second balcony pointed SE
Radio: Alinco DR-135
ARISSat 12:22GMT pass 04 Aug 11
Audio File: 04Aug2011-072240
Adding a audio file from the 12:22GMT pass o4 Aug 2011 pass. Very poor, but you can make out the following:
Amateur Radio Satellite….
Foreign language
SSTV
Hi, this is ARISSat… Call sign? … With the help of Amateur Radio… Wish you and your family peace and happiness.. bye bye.
Telemetry numbers .. not legible.
ARISSat – TODAY!
Article copied from AMSAT.org
ARISSat-1/KEDR Deployment August 3
EVA for ARISSat-1/KEDR Deployment
Set for August 3
- 1430: Hatch Open
- 1446: Egress ARISSat-1 and secure to airlock ladder
- 1452: Remove solar panel covers
- 1507: Translate to deploy site, activate PWR, TIMER1 and TIMER2 switches, verify LEDs on, and deploy
145.950 MHz FM Downlink
FM transmissions will cycle between a voice ID as RS01S, select telemetry values, 24 international greeting messages in 15 languages and SSTV images. One of the messages will be a conversation between Yuri Gagarin and ground control.
If you successfully receive the SSTV transmissions, you are invited to upload your picture to
to the ARISS SSTV Gallery.
435 MHz – 145 MHz Linear Transponder
The linear transponder will operate in Mode U/V (70 cm Up, 2m Down). It is an 16 KHz wide inverting passband and the convention will be to TX LSB on the 435 MHz uplink and RX USB on the 145 MHz downlink. This mode is designed to work with low power transmitters and omni antenna.
145.919 MHz CW Beacon
The CW transmissions will be callsign ID RS01S, select telemetry, and callsigns of people actively involved with the ARISS program.
145.920 MHz SSB BPSK-1000 Telemetry
The BPSK transmissions will feature a new 1kBPSK protocol developed by Phil Karn, KA9Q to be readable in low signal level conditions. The BPSK data will transmit satellite telemetry. When the CW2 beacon on 145.919 MHz is active this indicates that the BPSK-1000 format is being transmitted. If the CW1 beacon on 145.939 MHz is active this indicates the backup of BPSK-400 format is being transmitted.
AMSAT needs your telemetry from ARISSat-1/KEDR both during the test and after deployment from the International Space Station. Since there are no “Whole Orbit Data” storage mechanisms onboard ARISSat-1/KEDR, your submissions are the only way for AMSAT to collect the spacecraft telemetry and KURSK experiment results.
- Recorded ARISSat-1/KEDR and Kursk telemetry CSV files (in the ARISSatTLM folder) can be sent as an e-mail attachment to arissattlm.org
- If you are running ARISSatTLM and receiving the signal “live” from ARISSat-1/KEDR, please enable the telemetry forwarding option.
- The latest telemetry can be seen LIVE on your computer or cell phone.
ARISSat-1/KEDR Reception Report Certificates
When you receive the downlink signal from ARISSat-1/KEDR you are invited to send your report to the following e-mail boxes. You will receive a PDF certificate by e-mail.
Students and school groups are especially welcome. We look forward to your report!
Your report must contain the following information:
- The signal you received:
- the secret word*,
- an SSTV image, or,
- telemetry data
- Your name or group name
- The date/time of reception
- Your e-mail address of where to send your certificate. You will receive a PDF certificate via email.
Here are the e-mail boxes to send your reports:
- Secret word* contest to: secretword@arissat1.org
- SSTV image to: sstvreport@arissat1.org
- Telemetry data to: tlmreport@arissat1.org (either digital or voice report of the data you received)
Received BPSK telemetry and .CSV files should continue to be sent to: telemetry@arissattlm.org.
* Those who do hear the secret word or call sign please do not put it out to the world. That would ruin the contest for those still waiting for their station to be in range.
- Visit the ARISSat-1/KEDR How To page for pointers from the developers about soundcard connection, BPSK reception, SSTV reception.
- Christophe Mercier, ARISS-Europe published complete ARISSat-1/KEDR information in French: Dossier ARISSat-1
- Windows ARISSatTLM ground station soundcard demodulator and display software
- Mac ARISSatTLM software
- ARISSatTLM software user guide
- SSTV Software
- MMSSTV (Windows)
- Ham Radio Deluxe (Windows)
- MultiScan (Mac)
- Color ARISSat-1/KEDR Frequency Guide
- 2010 Symposium ARISSat-1/KEDR Presentation Slides (~1MB)
- Dayton 2011 ARISSat-1/KEDR Presentation Slides
- Follow ARISSat-1/KEDR on Twitter
- In USA you can also text follow Arissat1 to 40404 with your cell phone.
Moving the QTH
After flooding out the basement/den/radio room 3 times in the last heavy rains, we’ve decided it’s time to move (again). Not to far this time, just the other side of our apartment complex. I should even stay in the same grid square EM48sq (or so I hope). I’ll know that in mid August. What this will do is knock me down to field operations only for HF and VHF ops (ISS, sats, maybe 6m) from the new place. Will have to figure out interference for the neighbors if any, since we also do Skywarn from the apartment.
While this move is a necessity it does not make me happy. Once again have to change all the licenses and such, QSL cards and what not.
Cult of Mac
One of the things that I enjoy is computers, I’ve always had one and I had the tendancy to build them myself for many years. I’ve grown tired of always fiddling with them so I’ve started buying off the shelf units that fit my need at the time. I’m growing weary also of this and just want one that works. Always. This is leading me more and more to Apple brand products. The trick is getting this to play nice with the other hobby of Ham Radio.
I have an older G4 Mac Mini and a couple older G3 systems here and actually am in process of picking up yet another G4 (but this one is a Power Mac). I don’t have one of the new Intel based machines but will eventually get one. I’ll be setting up one of these devices to be my “experiment” in motion for getting Ham Radio running on a Mac. I’ll document my journey here, and advise what software I use.
My current radio computer is an older PC, running WinXP pro, with a gig or so of ram. I will leave this system up and running in tandem with the Mac Experiment, so if I can’t replace a piece of software I’ll still be able to do things.
This weekends task. APRS (internet based only)
