Category Archives: Satellite

Yaesu G5500 Rotor to Green Heron Az/El Controller

Posted on October 29, 2015 by robert

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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More AO-85 Telemetry Success

Posted on October 15, 2015 by robert

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

Posted on October 14, 2015 by robert

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

Posted on October 10, 2015 by robert

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

Posted on October 10, 2015 by robert

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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First AO-73 QSO in a Long Time

Posted on August 2, 2015 by robert

I was able to have a short QSO with Rick, W2JAZ tonight about 01:58Z on AO-73.  As I’ve been seeing over the past couple of weeks, the uplink offset is pretty far off the published specs and seems to get worse … Continue reading →

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Lost (but found?) Secret Sauce for AO-73

Posted on July 27, 2015 by robert

Shortly after AO-73 was launched, I had decent success working several stations, but only after adjusting my uplink frequency up about 8500 Hz from the published value.  Unfortunately, I never calibrated SatPC32 the correct way, so I was always entering … Continue reading →

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ARISS Contact: One Step Closer

Posted on July 21, 2015 by robert

I am one member on a team of folks who have had our initial proposal for an ARISS contact sometime between Jan and June of 2016.  The initial “marketing” proposal was accepted.  The next step in the process is to … Continue reading →

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Field Day Irony

Posted on June 29, 2015 by robert

Well Field Day 2015 has come and gone, and I was able to snag another satellite contact to help garner some bonus points for my club (Newport County Radio Club) — Thank you NX9B, I was W1LY on the other end. Despite … Continue reading →

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Satellite Uplink Calibration

Posted on June 25, 2015 by robert

I finally had some time to ensure that my SatPC32 program was correctly calibrated to my Icom IC-9100 when using any of the three available linear transponder satellites.  While SatPC32 deals with doppler corrections (assuming the PC Clock is accurately set … Continue reading →

Posted in Contests, From the OM, Satellite | 2 Comments