brainwagon

Well, the weather today sucks. We have 40mph gusts, and are expecting a full 2 inches of rain. That being said, I decided to try to work AO-51 as it came overhead by standing in my living room with my handheld yagi. It wasn’t stellar, but I did manage to get W8SME (you can hear […]

As uploaded to the Yahoo! group for TH-D7A owners… Quick Reference Sheet for the Kenwood TH-D7AG

Well, during a road trip with my wife to San Diego and back, I managed to begin to type up my notes for an upcoming tutorial article (cross fingers) on reception and decoding of weather satellite imagery. I basically reimplemented what I had, stripping it down to its barest essence, and trying to make it […]

Okay, I was bored waiting for potential Ande passes, so I tuned into Genesat. I got a few telemetry packets, although the frequency seemed to be 5khz low from the published frequency of 437.075Mhz. KE7EGC>UNDEF,TELEM:GeneSat1.orgB4511B0A00000000000000260069009F7113722166CC790B02F0 KE7EGC>UNDEF,TELEM:GeneSat1.orgFA511B06000000000001002600690001EA02BA27081CBF026621 KE7EGC>UNDEF,TELEM:GeneSat1.org04521B8A010E018901DD010100A4015F2DCB1C226D951D1C023A KE7EGC>UNDEF,TELEM:GeneSat1.org36521B73010F017101DE010000A4019F992216023D996D22E207 KE7EGC>UNDEF,TELEM:GeneSat1.org3B521B72010F016E01DE010000A4015F2DCB1C226D951D1C023A KE7EGC>UNDEF,TELEM:GeneSat1.org40521B0100000001000100250069005F2299221C02202274231C KE7EGC>UNDEF,TELEM:GeneSat1.org45521B0200000002000000260069009F07BC13A0230013281C02 Not sure what any of it means, but there it goes.

Around 21:53Z, I got two packets for the NO-61, otherwise known as ANDE ANDE-1>BEACON:T#002,002,010,009,004,003,01000000,000 ANDE-1>APRS2,SGATE::BLN2ANDE :ANDE stays awake for 30 secs after last pkt heard. Ande is due to deorbit very soon, probably within the next 24 hours, maybe even sooner. My orbital elements indicated its altitude was only about 107 miles, and it’s dropping […]

During the SO-50 pass this morning, WA8SME was asking if I was using a preamp, and whether I had any difficulty with receive sensitivity. On the Amsat mailing list, I’m amazed by reports of people who get weak signal strength using 14 element antennsas and the like, my handheld Arrow antenna, while not perfect, is […]

I managed to work WD9EWK from my car using only my Kenwood HT and the omnidirectional whip mounted on the roof of my SUV. I didn’t have my voice recorder with me, so I didn’t get a recording though. Obviously using an omni antenna picks up a lot of signals and intermodulation distortion: there were […]

It was positively chatty on the westward pass of AO-51 this morning. For fun, I reduced power to just 1w on my HT, and nobody seemed to notice, although it did get scratchy at the end of the pass. Dec 16 pass of AO-51, 8:57 Local Time The beginning of the pass is a little […]

More interesting reading, from Tom Clark on the AMSAT mailing list.

Yawn. Recorded another satellite pass. Decoded it with my software. Played with it in GIMP. Part of the pass spoiled by an oddly synchronous signal, which seemed to also be Doppler shifted. Problem on the satellite? I don’t know. NOAA17 Pass, Dec 14, 2007

I tried to work AO-51 from the parking lot at work tonight. It was a low pass, and just about every noise source in the universe seems to be on the recording. I tried feebly to send at the end, but the nose was horrible, with tons of intermod coming back through the earphones. Yuck! […]

Well, didn’t get any packets relayed through ANDE, but I did receive some W6SMU during its pass just before lunch. I have sworn that I will get something echoed through it before it deorbits, now best guess to occur on Christmas Eve. W6MSU>APRS,ANDE-1*:=3803.21NS12121.62W& W6MSU>APRS,ANDE-1*:=3803.21NS12121.62W&

Robert (NH7WN) was my first QSL card for a contact via AO-51. I still owe him a QSL card, but to be fair, I haven’t designed one yet. Still, on a low pass to the west, I managed to work him again. He was recording the contact, here’s my recording. Paul (WA7SDI) comes in from […]

Using information from the post I mentioned earlier about operating via packet on the ISS, I decided to give it a try. It was a nominal success, although the pass was short and I was operating with just 5w into the omni on the top of my car. Sorry KD7ZLF, I’ll be better prepared next […]

This was mentioned on the AMSAT mailing list. In 43 days, the Delfi-C3 cubesat will be launched. After a 90 day mission, it will have a 400mw linear transponder enabled for amateur radio use in mode U/V. Awesome. Unfortunately, it’s another one of these satellites that is in low earth orbit, and is likely to […]