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Skriven 2007-03-20 22:17:00 av Holger Granholm (2:20/228)
rende: Amsat news bulletin 077
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AMSAT NEWS SERVICE
ANS-077
ANS is a free, weekly, news and information service of AMSAT North
America, The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation. ANS reports on the
activities of a worldwide group of Amateur Radio operators who share an
active interest in designing, building, launching and communicating
through analog and digital Amateur Radio satellites.
Please send any amateur satellite news or reports to:
ans-editor@amsat.org
In this edition:
* AMSAT/TAPR Banquet at Dayton 2007
* Suitsat-2 Hardware Takes Shape
* OSCAR I Pioneer SK
* Call for donations for ARISS Antennas on Columbus
* Call for Papers--2007 ARRL/TAPR Digital Communications Conference
* ARISS Status - 12 March 2007
SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-077.01
AMSAT/TAPR Banquet at Dayton 2007
AMSAT News Service Bulletin 077.01
From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
March 18, 2007
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-077.01
AMSAT is pleased to announce the first AMSAT/TAPR Banquet will be held
Friday evening May 18,2007 at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH in
conjunction with the 2007 Dayton Hamvention. The two groups share many
members and this gives everyone the opportunity to attend both dinners.
The "Dinner Under the
Wings" festivities will begin at 18:00 with a cash bar and appetizers in
the Air Power Gallery (World War II). The buffet dinner will be served
at 19:00 in the Cold War area. Following a few AMSAT and TAPR
announcements after dinner you will be free to roam the museum. The
price for the dinner is $35.00 per person and includes appetizers,
salad, meal, dessert, coffee, iced tea, tax and gratuity.
See http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/ for information about the museum.
The museum will close at 22:00 and everyone must be out of the museum by
then.
Vegetarian meals are available if selected when you purchase your
ticket.
Reservations are required. These can be purchased online at the AMSAT
Store http://www.amsat-na.com/item.php?id=100133
or from the TAPR web site at http://www.tapr.org/dayton.html
There will be no Banquet ticket sales at the AMSAT booth this year. We
expect this to be a very popular event, so reserve your tickets early.
Reservations will close this year on Monday night, May 14,2007 to allow
us to give the museum a count on Tuesday.
Everyone is responsible for their own transportation to and from the
museum.
There will be no banquet speaker this year to give everyone a chance to
view the exhibits.
Banquet Menu available on the AMSAT web site
At 5:00 PM on Friday afternoon there will be a special showing of the
IMAX movie "Space Station". This movie is approximately 47 minutes
long and contains about 4 minutes of amateur radio contacts between
school children and the International Space Station. The IMAX theater
is located in the museum building off the main lobby area. Attendees
at the movie will be able to go to the banquet at 6:00 PM when the doors
open about 10 minutes after the movie is over. The lobby contains
restrooms, telephones and some seating. At least 50 people must sign
up for the movie in advance. Call the museum IMAX theater on
(937)-253-IMAX to make reservations. Special rates apply for children
and seniors. Adults are $6.00, seniors are $5.50 and children 8 through
college 22 (student ID required) are $4.50.
[ANS thanks Gould, WA4SXM,for the above information]
SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-077.02
Suitsat-2 Hardware Takes Shape
AMSAT News Service Bulletin 077.02
From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
March 18, 2007
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-077.02
Bob McGwier, N4HY, AMSAT's VP of Engineering provided the following
update on the development of hardware for Suitsat-2.
We had a complete breakthrough on the Odyssey Siren in the past two
weeks. It will be used in Suitsat 2, in a terrestrial linear repeater
experiment by Viktor Kudielka OE1VKW and friends, who supported its
development, and we are already leaping all over the place to
applications.
Frank Brickle and I will be doing our SDR code on it over the next
several days. The board as shown in the schematic needs some
modifications to fix the 3 - ish volt power supply for the Codec and a
modified oscillator circuit but we are certain it will all work now.
On the 10.7 MHz IF, I measured 0 dBm max into a 50 ohm load and less
than -120
dBm MDS and > 80 dB dynamic range. This is with a BOM of <$50
in parts and
about a $20 dsp pic chip!
Yesterday in Rick's, W2GPS, lab, with Tom, K3IO, we made the above
measurements, hacked on code and turn the thing into a bent pipe
transponder. I also did the hilbert transform to make it an inverting
transponder. It all worked perfectly.
Detected audio in an SDR-IQ SDR as well as captured IF from the SDR-IQ
of the transponder. Can be downloaded and heard from:
http://www.cnssys.com/~w2gps/amsat_files/suitsat/
We have to balanced for image and do DC offset correction but the thing
works and sounds great as you can hear for yourself!
Additional details and pictures of the hardware can be found at
http://hpsdr.org/wiki/index.php?title=ODYSSEY
[ANS thanks Bob, N4HY, for the above information]
SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-077.03
OSCAR I Pioneer SK
AMSAT News Service Bulletin 077.03
From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
March 18, 2007
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-077.03
Passing away last week, we remember a WWII vet who helped launch the 1st
civilian satellite.
Richard 'Dick' Esneault never had a day of basic training, never fired a
shot in a war and never finished college.
But the electronics whiz of the 1940s was a highly-sought-after
non-combatant soldier during World War II. He also became a successful
Huntsville business owner during the height of the 1960's boom.
Outside his family, Esneault's biggest accomplishment was his role in
helping develop and launch the first civilian satellite, OSCAR (Orbiting
Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio), made by a group of ham radio
operators.
The 10-pound, three-watt radio transmitter was launched Dec. 12, 1961,
from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, riding on the back of an
Atlas-Agena booster carrying a military reconnaissance satellite. Its
Morse code message, "Hi," was received by more than 570 radio amateur
tracking stations in 28 countries.
The homemade satellite, built primarily from donated parts at an
out-of-pocket
cost of $63, beat the multimillion-dollar satellite
Telstar to space by seven
months.
It captured the attention of broadcast legend Edward R. Murrow, who told
then-President John Kennedy about it.
Kennedy said of OSCAR: "This is exactly what we're looking for.. a
peaceful use of space."
In a Dec. 12, 1986, article in The Times, Esneault said Kennedy was
responsible for giving OSCAR the go-ahead to ride aboard a military
mission.
Esneault became an avid ham radio operator and received his license at
age 13.
While in high school, he took night lessons to learn Morse code
so he could
be certified by the Federal Communications Commission. His
instructor was so
impressed with his aptitude, he offered the teenager
a job with Pan American
World Airways.
Another case of "We are History, We are Ham Operators".
[ANS thanks John, VK5BUI, for the above information]
SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-077.04
Call for donations for ARISS Antennas on Columbus
AMSAT News Service Bulletin 077.04
From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
March 18, 2007
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-077.04
This week Gaston Bertels, ON4WF, ARISS-Europe chairman discussed the
planned amateur radio station to be installed aboard the European Space
Agency's Columbus Space Laboratory module which will be added to the
International Space Station.
The microwave panel antenanas, attached to the Meteorite Debris Panels
of the Columbus Space Laboratory, will allow operationgs on new frequen-
cies that will enable ARISS to establish wideband and video operations
for the first time. This facility will provide ATV facilities for School
contacts and allow continuous transponder operation. Also, With the
Columbus module being located at some considerable distance from the
other two ARISS stations aboard the ISS, this new antenna configuration
will permit parallel operations on the new bands at the same time as the
existing operations.
The development of the antennas is presently taken care of by the
Institute of Telecommunications and Acoustics of the Wroclaw University
of Technology. The Columbus antennas will work on L-band and S-band.
Taking into account that time is getting really short, ARISS-Europe
renews the call for donations to the IARU and AMSAT societies as well as
to their members individually.
A financial account has been opened by AMSAT Belgium. Donators within
the European Union will not have to pay any additional banking costs
(beyond the costs of a national money transfer) if they use the
following inter- national banking number (IBAN) and mention the
international identification code (BIC), reference the transfer as
"Donation Columbus":
AMSAT Belgium
001-2306592-08
IBAN BE63 0012 3065 9208
BIC GEBABEBB
If you have a PayPal account you can easily make a donation by using the
"Donate" button in the left column. Even if you don't have a PayPal
account you can use your creditcard to make a Paypal donation for the
Columbus pro- ject by clicking the "Donate" button and follow
instructions.
[ANS thanks Gaston, ON4WF, for the above information]
SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-077.05
Call for Papers--2007 ARRL/TAPR Digital Communications Conference
AMSAT News Service Bulletin 077.05
From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
March 18, 2007
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-077.05
Technical papers are solicited for presentation at the 26th Annual ARRL
and TAPR Digital Communications Conference to be held September 28-30,
2007 in Hartford, Connecticut. These papers will also be published in
the Conference Proceedings (you do NOT need to attend the conference to
have your paper included in the Proceedings). The submission deadline is
July 31, 2007. Please send papers to:
Maty Weinberg
ARRL
225 Main St
Newington, CT 06111
or you can make your submission via e-mail to: maty@arrl.org
Papers will be published exactly as submitted and authors will retain
all rights.
[ANS thanks Steve, WB8IMY, for the above information]
SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-077.06
ARISS Status - 12 March 2007
AMSAT News Service Bulletin 077.06
From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
March 18, 2007
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-077.06
1. Illinois School Contact Successful
On Tuesday, March 6, students at Boulder Hill Elementary School in
Montgomery,
Illinois participated in an Amateur Radio on International
Space Station
(ARISS) contact. Twenty-three children from the Boulder
Hill Radio Club were
able to ask one question each of Sunita Williams,
KD5PLB. The audio was fed
into the EchoLink AMSAT (101 377) and JK1ZRW
(277 208) servers (15
connections from six countries), as well as the
IRLP Discovery Reflector
9010. Several newspapers covered the event.
The Beacon News posted an article on its website. See:
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/beaconnews/news/286091,2_1_AU07_RADIO_S1.a
rticle
Several local dignitaries attended including the mayor of Oswego who
remarked, “A very impressive presentation. I ran a Summer Science Camp
in Naperville 203 Schools for 17 years until I retired last year and
wish we could have had this experience for our science campers since our
focus was on space travel and students built rockets and robots. Your
presentation was mentioned at this mornings's Rotary Club meeting and we
who were present applauded your efforts, your clubs hard work, and the
students'/teachers tremendous interest.”
The School Superintendent also sent thanks “for bringing a very
special, history making event to the kids and the community. I am
certain our kids will never forget yesterday. I know I wont.”
Another thank you from the ARISS-Boulder Hill contact control operator
was posted to the ISS Fan Club webpage. See:
http://www.issfanclub.com/node/5743#comment-11410
2. Mission Viejo School Contact Successful
On Friday, March 9, Mike Lopez-Alegria, KE5GTK, spoke with 9-12th
graders from Mission Viejo High School in California, (Mikes alma
mater), during an Amateur Radio on the International Space Station
(ARISS) contact. Originally planned for March 8, the school experienced
technical difficulties, and the contact was rescheduled for the next
day. The astronaut answered 13 questions posed to him by thirteen
students. The audio was streamed live on the University of California,
Irvine website. Audio was also fed into the Echolink AMSAT server, which
received 9 connections, including 2 repeaters, from the U.S., Japan, the
Netherlands and Australia. The Orange County Register ran an article on
its website covering the event entitled, “Students pick brain of O.C.
astronaut.” See:
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/sciencetech/abox/article_1614937.php
3. ARISS Contact Excites School Children
Nathan McCray, K9CPO, who teaches at East Elementary School in
Wisconsin, left
his ham radio turned on in the classroom in case any
contacts with the Space
Station might be heard. He was fortunate enough
to pick up on an Amateur
Radio on the International Space Station
(ARISS) school contact which grabbed
his students attention for the
next several minutes. One of the students
participating in the contact
asked how fast the space station traveled and
when Sunita gave the
answer “over 17,000 mph,” the class made a
collective “Ooooh”
sound! Afterwards, the teacher took the opportunity to teach a
mini-lesson on geography and math using the information presented in
that short ARISS contact. The students have repeatedly asked him,
“When can
we talk to the astronauts?” He is now in the process of filling out
an application.
4. Virginia Run Elementary School Contact Update
Virginia Run Elementary School experienced an Amateur Radio on the
International Space Station (ARISS) contact on March 2. The American
Radio Relay League covered the event with a story posted on its website.
See: http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2007/03/06/101/?nc=1
Photos of the contact are available on:
http://www.viennawireless.org/ariss.php
[ANS thanks Carol, KB3LKI for the above information]
In addition to regular membership, AMSAT offers membership in the
President's Club. Members of the President's Club, as sustaining donors
to AMSAT Project Funds, will be eligible to receive additional benefits.
Application forms are available from the AMSAT Office.
73,
This week's ANS Editor,
Lee McLamb, KU4OS
ku4os at amsat dot org
_______________________________________________
Via the ANS mailing list courtesy of AMSAT-NA
http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/ans
_______________________________________________
73 de Sam, OH0NC
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MR/2 2.30 If I save time, when do I get it back ?
* Origin: Coming to you from the Sunny Aland Islands. (2:20/228)
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