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This just showed up in my Twitter stream: A great article by Diana Eng, KC2UHB, on the MAKE blog regarding working Amateur Radio satellites.  Diana is part of NYC Resistor, a hacker space based out of (you guessed it) New York City. I am glad to see that NYC Resistor does it’s fair share of Ham Radio projects, as I write this an article about the 2009 Flight of the Bumblebees is on their front page. It almost offsets the the like of QRZ and it’s ilk. (Speaking of which, check out K3NG’s article regarding QRZ and the possibility of starting an alternative.)

There’s been a flurry of activity recently on AMSAT-BB about AO-27. Thanks to the efforts of the command team, the satellite, that crashed the same weekend that Steve and I built the arrow clone, has been restarted and is now operational again. The AO-27 webpage still lists the satellite as “On Orbit Checkout” which means the satellite may not fully operational yet, but there are people reporting to the mailing list that the repeater is active over North America.

Many thanks to the AO-27 command team for their efforts in restoring the aging bird to service.

This floated across AMSAT-BB a few days ago:

From spaceweather.com:

The International Space Station (ISS) transited the Moon at 3:38 China Standard Time,” says Xin Li of the Beijing Planetarium. “We photographed the event using a Meade 8″ LX200 and a ToUCam video camera.” The flyby occurred not long after the space shuttle docked with the ISS, so there are actually two spacecraft in the picture.

ISS and Endeavour traversing the moon

Click for the article with a link to a larger photo.

Now that’s freaking awesome.

AO-51 is in a bit of a special mode these past couple of days. Instead of Voice, they’re encouraging people to do SSTV over the satellite. This was originally done back in October to prepare for Richard Garriott sending SSTV from the ISS, but it proved popular enough for the AO-51 command team to add it to their schedule for the month of November. This evening I monitored the passes and was rewarded with some great photos:

These were on the 1709EST Pass:

The 1848 pass was a little more crowded with a couple of dead carriers and people accidentally keying over each other. But, I was rewarded with two “DX” stations and I was able to grab some photos once things settled down:

I am absolutely BUMMED that I couldn’t contact VA7VW by voice. By my calculations, he was 2351 miles away from my QTH. That would have broke my existing “longest contact via satellite” record which was to K7WIN in Arizona, a distance of 2268 mies.

I am also disappointed that I was only able to monitor the fun. I do not have the correct adapter to transmit SSTV from my FT-60, so I am relegated to RX only. Perhaps if I sit down and experiment with some adapters, I will be able to jury rig a cable, but I’m thinking it’s more of an experiment for the next time the command team puts the satellite in this mode. I’m hoping I see it on the December schedule.

Least week I had the pleasure of volunteering at the 51st Scouting Jamboree on the Air at Camp Carpenter in Manchester, NH. JOTA is an annual event in which both Boy and Girl Scouts all over the world speak to each other by means of amateur radio. I was first exposed to JOTA in the early 1990s when I was an avid Shortwave Listener (SWL). I would tune around the bands with my rather ancient Hallicrafters SX-110 searching for the voices of other JOTA stations. I wasn’t a Ham yet and didn’t know any JOTA events in my area so I never actually talked to anyone, but I was glued to the radio for the weekend listening to far flung stations across the world.

Fast forward to two weeks ago when I got an e-mail from Barry Baines, WD4ASW. Barry is an AMSAT officer and was looking for someone to volunteer at Daniel Webster Council’s JOTA event. Apparently all the other area AMSAT officers were busy and since I helped at the AMSAT booth at Boxboro, they recognize a sucker when the see one know that I love to help out. Despite it being quite a hike and an all day event, I jumped at the chance. Partly to give back to Scouting, partly to gab about satellites, but mostly a an excuse to play radio all day. I was somewhat nervous, as I had little to no idea what was going to happen, what I needed to do, and what was going to be available too me. Still, I forged ahead and aimed to do really really well, or at least shovel enough BS to make myself sounding convincing.

An interesting side story is that after I linked up with Paul, KG7HF, the organizer of the event, I recorded the ISS. As I’m listening, one of the two stations that made contact with Garriott was none other then Paul himself. This is an incredible feat. The first thing I thought was “What the heck does he need me for?”

Saturday came and I loaded up my car with my (still not 100%) satellite yagi, my K5OE Handi-Tenna as a backup, my FT-60, my laptop, and some various satellite reference materials. I arrived, met Paul, and he showed me to my station. Paul graciously provided his TS-2000 and his laptop with his rig control software. Needless to say, I was pleased as this is like driving a Ferrari as compared to my setup, which is more like a Pinto. Paul had a 2M Eggbeater antenna and we kludged up a 70cm setup with his Dual Band mobile antenna as his 70cm eggbeater was not working. The Scouts started to trickle in, and we tried to have our first ISS pass. No voice contact, but the few Scouts that were around were amazed by the SSTV pictures. The next ISS pass was more crowded, and we were rewarded with hearing Garriott doing voice. While we were unsuccessful in contacting him, they Scouts were rapt in listening to the radio. There were a few Scouts who walked over halfway through the pass not knowing exactly what they were listening to, leading to a humorous exchange afterward:

Them: “So where was that guy?”
Me: “On the International Space Station.”
Them: “But where was he?”
Me: *confused* “Uhm. In space.”
Them: *not sure if I’m pulling their leg* “Like an astronaut?”
Me: “Yes. He’s up there for a week. He’s on board using their radio. His name is Richard Garriott. He’s a space tourist.”
Them: *eyes start to widen* “Wow!”

With our limited 70cm setup and my inexperience of tuning transponder based satellites, we were not as lucky on the other satellites. We were able to hear a few stations, but were unable to make a contact. However, all the ISS passes were big hits and at least had everyone talking about the contacts. I also worked out a script for the sSouts to handle the contacts to the ISS (with myself as the control operator). My research showed that ISS was not a foreign entity as long as Garriott was using NA1SS calsign (third party traffic agreements, what a crock!), so I let the Scouts take the wheel and just cued them as to what to say. I hope a few of them got bit by “the bug.”

It was a great day. I think the scouts had a great time, and I did as well. I’ve already told Paul to contact me for next year’s event. I met a couple of nice younger hams Devin, KB1OSI and Brittany, KB1OGL, and hopefully inspired a few more. I also have come to a conclusion that I need to get a better setup for satellites. I’ve barely scratched the surface in my setup and it would be fun to expand my satellite use into transponder based ones as well.

They also gave me a patch! I haven’t got a Boy Scout patch in YEARS! How cool is that?

Richard Garriott, W5KWQ, AKA “Lord British” from Ultima, is currently on board the International Space Station as a “Space Tourist”. While Space Tourists are cool and all, what makes Garriott special is that A. He is the son of Owen Garriott, who did the first Amateur Radio transmission from space, and B. he is actively using Amateur Radio during his stay on board the ISS.

I, along with many other Amateur Radio operators have been monitoring his transmissions over the past couple of days. Today, since I was home telecommuting, I snuck out for a few passes with my Yagi to monitor the ISS passes. The first one was the most momentous as after his Slow Scan TV (SSTV) transmissions he quickly popped on the frequency and talked to a few stations.

• Oct 16th, 09:32EDT ISS pass (MP3, 7:38, 3.1MB)

The next few passes were SSTV only, and the last pass, while trasmitting SSTV, the camera was acting up and sending back a black picture. Whoops!

Without further ado, here are the shots that I picked up today:




You can get more information on Garriott’s space trip at richardinspace.com

Previously, when I have been operating the various amateur radio satellites I have been operating out of my car, listening with my FT-60 into a K5OE Handi-Tenna and transmitting with my FT-7800 into a vertical. While this has been very fruitful for QSOs, I have longed for a easier solution not requiring me to head out to my car every time I wanted to operate, something that would give me a little more free range of motion then just hanging my arm out my window, and possibly have something that could be used to pick up the various weather satellites. Plus

There are commercial solutions to my problem, namely the the Arrow II Satellite Antenna who’s name is nearly synonymous with portable satellite operation. However, since I am thrifty (read: cheap) that was way out of my price range. Plus, antennas are just hunks of metal whipped in some kind of strange shape. You’re paying someone to assemble it.

While I have no chance of designing something like that, I thankfully have a friend who is infinitely more talented in such matters. Steve, KB1MEH, the same one who helped me with my original Handi Tenna heard my laments and whipped up a design to rival Arrow’s. Last weekend, he drilled the boom and I cut elements to size and this weekend, we had our first tests.

Unfortunately, we had mixed results. Test #1 was at Fort Taber / Fort Rodman. I tried to operate AO-51 on a 10 degree eastern pass but with no luck. After I failed miserably, we then tried to raise various repeaters. Hit Falmouth with 2W (15mi over ocean). After having a quick QSO and a signal report from KB1QBZ, I tried Fall River with 5W (15mi over land) and then Cranston, RI with 5W (30mi over land). I think I might have done better, but I’ve heard repeated claims of New Beford being in a bit of a Black Hole of RF. After some tuning around, I was also able to pick up, but not raise, Quincy. Which I can not do from my car even outside the “black hole” areas.

Me talking with KB1QBZ

After heading back to my house we tried a better AO-51 pass (74 degrees) and had better luck. While Steve could pick up the satellite better with my older antenna, I was still able to hear it and make two contacts. This was the first time that Steve also ever heard a satellite pass and I think he was surprised at the coverage. I think I was able to raise Quincy, but the mosquitoes were out in force, so further testing was postponed until morning.

It was a mostly successful test run. The 440 RX issue needs to be solved, there are some slight issues with the gamma matches, and I need to buy some kind of handle thingy for the end, but the antenna performed great. It is a fun project and Steve did a great job designing it. Thanks Steve!

I’ve been playing less on AO-51/SO-50/AO-27 recently. I have been trying to add a bit of variety into my satellite habits by playing with the new cubesats that were launched a month or so ago. The main one that has been capturing my interest is SEEDS which contains a “Digi Talker” (aka a device that plays a recording on a loop) and does SSTV.

I’m not sure if I should post the audio recordings, as they seem to have a “secret code word” included to verify reception, but I can show the SSTV captures:

May 23rd, 2008:

May 23rd, 2008:

With the 2nd repeater on AO-51 active, a repeater that is vastly underutilized I might add, a bunch of us in #amsat tried to all get on the 2nd repeater during one of the middle US passes.

We had moderate success, with KB2HSH, N3CRT, and KI4BKE getting on. Plus, we had Drew, KO4MA come on. Plus, with us using the 2nd repeater, we could actually talk! Amazing!

• Mar 24th, 20:15EDT AO-51 pass (MP3, 10:28, 4.2MB)

I’ve typed up a fairly simple “do’s and don’ts” guide to working AO-51. The guide focuses more on etiquette and operational guidelines rather then technical ideas, because there are already some excellent guides out there for the new user to read up on. That, and my technical setup leaves much to be desired.

This was more or less concieved one night in #amsat while discussing the operational issues on AO-51. The satellite is a very good, very easy satellite to get into, however, the more people jam on, the harder it is for people to use it. So, myself, John (KB2HSH), Charles (N3CRT), and Mark (KF6KYI) all tossed around ideas on what is more a less a good “code of conduct” for AO-51 operation.

• The Courteous Ham’s Guide to AO-51 PDF (35K)
• The Courteous Ham’s Guide to AO-51 DOC (38K)

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