AO-16 gone quiet…

April 27, 2008 | Amateur Radio | By: Mark VandeWettering

The news is that satellite AO-16 has gone quiet. We’ve been assured not to panic:


Hello all,

There are reports at http://oscar.dcarr.org/ that AO-16 has gone silent.
Should this be the case, there is no cause for alarm.  Over the last month
AO-16 has gone from full illumination (0 minutes of eclipse) to over 250
minutes of eclipse.  Since the bird has no fancy housekeeping code running,
a reasonable explanation is that the battery voltage dropped low enough to
put the bird into a protected (and silent) mode.

Over the next few days I'll work at collecting telemetry and restoring the
voice mode operations of AO-16.  Please refrain from transmitting to the
satellite until further notice.

On behalf of the AO-16 Command Team,

Mark L. Hammond  [N8MH]