Monthly Archives: October 2015

Yaesu G5500 Rotor to Green Heron Az/El Controller

The Primary Station for the N1ASA ARISS contact, happening sometime in the spring of 2016, uses a Yaesu G-5500 Az/El Rotor and a Green Heron RT-21azel Az/El Controller. While Green Heron supplies fine documentation including the pinouts of both devices, … Continue reading

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K1MCS Participated in School Club Roundup

It’s a wrap — SCR is in the logbook. 21 non-ham middle school students participated at Monsignor Clarke School in the School Club Roundup and did very well.  Each student made at least one voice and one digital contact (often … Continue reading

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Knot Good

Speaking of JOTA… When putting a dipole up in the air (thank you Willy, W1LY), its a good idea to have two spools of cord — one per end.  During Field Day, we killed off one of my 1000 foot … Continue reading

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Thank You DX, From a JOTA Coach

For the past three years, Newport County Radio Club, has hosted the Boy Scout Jamboree on the Air (JOTA) in Portsmouth RI.  It’s always a good time for both the young scouts, who earn a Radio Merit Badge (16 of … Continue reading

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A School Club Roundup Antenna for Monsignor Clarke School

John Z, N1JPZ, his son Rick, and I put up a temporary 30 foot mast and raised the 20-meter dipole up in the air.  (Actually John and Rick did most of the work, I just stood around looking useless and … Continue reading

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More AO-85 Telemetry Success

I kept my FUNcube Dongle Pro Plus (FCD) running all night long hoping to capture several morning passes.  Over a total of four passes it picked up 7 more frames — somewhat dissapointing. It turns out that the automatic signal … Continue reading

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Successful AO-85 Telemetry Decode

For a couple of nights, I had my IC-9100 hooked up and listed to folks chatting on AO-85, but I didn’t decode a single telemetry packet.  I suspected that the IC-9100 was filtering out the lower frequencies necessary for Data … Continue reading

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Updating WiFi Info for NTP Clock

My ever-faithful Apple Airport Extreme decided to give up the ghost about a week ago.  I was forced to use the built-in WiFi in my Verizon router as a temporary replacement.  Of course that meant that all the WiFi based … Continue reading

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Many QSOs heard during AO-85 pass Oct 11 0037-0044 UTC

I didn’t think the transponder had been turned on, but things must have gone well. Expecting to be able to decode telemetry during a pass predicted to begin at 20:42 EDT here in FN41fn-land, I started hearing QSOs at 20:37 EDT. … Continue reading

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Fox-1A Launch Successful

AMSAT launched their first CubeSat, Fox-1A, Amateur Oscar 85 (AO-85) on October 8th.  Telemetry has already been received, and the satellite is currently in the commissioning stage which may take a few days or a couple of weeks, prior to being … Continue reading

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