Date: August 2nd 2009

AMSAT NEWS SERVICE ANS-214

ANS is a free, weekly, news and information service of AMSAT North America, The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation ANS reports on the activities of a worldwide group of Amateur Radio operators who share an active interest in designing, building, launching and communicating through analog and digital Amateur Radio satellites

Please send any amateur satellite news or reports to:

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In this edition: * North Texas Balloon Launch Number 17 * Castor and Pollox Deployed From STS-127 * Amateur Radio Newsline 2009 "Young Ham of the Year" Announced * DRAGONSat Deployed From STS-127 * Satellite Shorts From All Over * ARISS Status - 27 July 2009

SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-214 01 North Texas Balloon Launch Number 17

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 214 01 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD August 2, 2009 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-214 01

AMATEUR RADIO GROUP TO FLY BALLOON FLIGHT FROM HILLSBORO TEXAS AIRPORT

The next mission number 17, named Ã‚Â“Summer Time BluesÃ‚Â”, to be held by the North Texas Balloon Project (NTEXBP) is planned for launch about 8:30 am on August 8, 2009 from the municipal airport in Hillsboro, Texas, just south of Fort Worth and Dallas Back up date is August 15, 2009 Two payload packages containing sensors and amateur radios will be carried to nearly 100,000 feet in about 90 minutes by a helium balloon and return via parachute in about 50 minutes Mobile recovery teams will use position reports from the onboard GPS and APRS transmitter on 144 390 MHz and radio direction finding techniques to recover the payloads

Pre-launch activities will begin about 7:00 am with the HF Launch Net on 7260 +/- 5 kHz, LSB beginning around 8:00 am A cross band repeater will be activated soon after launch Uplink is 445 800 MHz and downlink is 147 560 MHz Handheld VHF radios and scanners can receive the downlink easily At the peak altitude ham radio operators from Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Kansas can contact each other using the cross band repeater

The radios used normally have a range of about 5 to 10 miles, but that range will be extended to about 500 miles at the peak altitude At the peak altitude, the curvature of the earth is visible Digital video is recorded for later playback APRS packets transmit the balloon's location about once a minute

NTEXBP's Tommy Davis said, "In past operations we did the launches for fun and the enjoyment of flight It involves many different facets of amateur radio and thus a project that many types of amateur radio operators can enjoy together Ã‚Â” There is also an educational component utilized by scouting groups, because it involves orienteering and can be counted toward several different merit badges, as well as by teachers for science experiments Davis said, Ã‚Â“Area scout troops are invited along with all that are interested Ã‚Â”

In the event of unfavorable weather or poor jet stream conditions, the launch will occur at a later date Be sure to check www ntexbp org or www w5sjz net and other Ham Radio forums and news sources for later information

The public is invited to come out to the Hillsboro Municipal Airport, located at Exit 3 on Interstate Highway 35W, to watch the launch

North Texas Balloon Project is a group of amateur (HAM) radio operators from Fort Worth and Dallas and has launched balloons from Cleburne, Clifton, and Hillsboro airports since 1991 This is the first launch during this year and is funded by the amateur radio operators associated with the North Texas Balloon Project

OperatorÃ‚Â’s and Technical Data to follow at www ntexbp org or www w5sjz net Reports, questions, APRS and other data may be sent to NTEXBP by emailing webmaster@ntexbp org

Please forward to interested Hams and ham communities I would also appreciate any announcement that could be made on local repeaters during allotted calls for announcements Thanks as always

[ANS thanks Larry, K5PHD, for the above information]

/EX

SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-214 02 Castor and Pollox Deployed From STS-127

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 214 02 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD August 2, 2009 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-214 02

Castor and Pollox, two satellites in the Atmospheric Neutral Density Experiment (ANDE) program were successfully deployed from STS-127 after it undocked from the International Space Station

The ANDE mission consists of two spherical spacecraft fitted with retro-reflectors for satellite laser ranging (SLR) The constant and well-determined cross section and surface properties of the ANDE spacecraft provide an ideal set of objects for monitoring atmospheric drag and the calibration of space surveillance network (SSN) assets both radar and optical

Castor Castor is a 19 inch diameter aluminum sphere with a mass of 63 kg The satellite has several different types of sensors There are two main sensors, a Neutral particle wind and temperature spectrometer and an ion mass spectrometer A group of college students designed and built a MEMS sensor payload to test some commercial gyroscopes and a magnetometer There are also six light sensors and six temperature sensors mounted in the satellite hemispheres

Pollox The Pollux satellite was originally to be a passive satellite with retroreflectors for laser ranging It has been turned into a high school student project involving several schools in the Fairfax County, Virginia area The electronics is based on cubesat hardware developed at the Naval Research Laboratory and Stensat Group LLC

The communications board contains the transmitter and receiver The transmitter operates at 2 meters and can put out up to 1 watt of signal Power level is adjustable The transmitter can operate at 1200 baud AFSK and 9600 baud FSK The transmitter uses the AX 25 protocol An experimental FX 25 protocol will be tested that adds forward error correction capability to the AX 25 protocol and still allows typical TNCs to decode the packets

Both satellites will transmit on 145 825 MHz Additional details about the telemetry format, as well as the FX 25 and GMSK experiments can be found at https://goby nrl navy mil/ANDE/Main html

[ANS thanks Ivan, KD4HBO, for the above information]

/EX

SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-214 03 Amateur Radio Newsline 2009 "Young Ham of the Year" Announced

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 214 03 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD August 2, 2009 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-214 03

"Wow! Oh, my God All my friends here at Seabase are going to be really impressed Oh, my God!"

And, that's how it sounded when we caught up with Andrew Koenig, call letters KE5GDB, by cellphone at the Boy Scouts of America Seabase in Key West, Florida, where he had just arrived with members of Troop 848 from Houston for a week of scuba diving adventures

The Life Scout, who is just shy of his 16th birthday, is working to earn the Eagle rank and was ecstatic to learn he had been chosen for special recognition by the Amateur Radio Newsline Before telling him he had been selected as the Young Ham of the Year, we asked Andrew how he might feel if he were to receive such an award He said it would be a nice honor to share with his mentors, including his award nominator Nick Lance, call letters KC5KBO, who has helped several NASA astronauts earn their ham tickets

"Young Ham of the Year would probably go in the book of things that I've done in ham radio that they are really impressed with," Andrew said "It would just mean a lot to me

"Nick Lance, he hasn't really been pushing me to do anything A lot of the stuff I discover on my own But, he's one of the big roles, one of the key aspects in ham radio and it would give him a really good feeling to know that one of his students went on to get youth ham of the year "

Andrew holds a General class license and passed the test for his first ticket back in 2005 while a sixth-grader at the Westbrook Intermediate School in Houston where Lance - who is retiring in August from the Johnson Space Center - teaches an amateur radio license class

Andrew is the son of Joe and Lauri Koenig of Houston Joe holds the call letters KE5JQA and got licensed as a result of Andrew's interest Andrew also has a younger brother, Kyle

Among the achievements Andrew has accomplished is helping with an Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact at the Westbrook Intermediate School

"I actually helped test a lot of the equipment for the contact, since it was a telebridge contact," Andrew recalled "The station that was actually contacting the ISS was in California, I believe

"And, we were in Clear Lake, Texas So, for some reason the phone patch wasn't working properly So, I had to actually go into one of the school phones and test that - I think about 15 minutes worth of testing before the contact started And, finally right on time, we got it going again and everything was working just fine "

The contact with Astronaut Clay Anderson, who holds the ham radio call sign KD5PLA, was a success - thanks to Andrew

Andrew also helped facilitate a terrestrial contact between Astronaut Chris Hadfield (ham radio call letters KC5RNJ and VA3OOG) and students at two Canadian schools using an Internet Repeater Linking Project (IRLP) node he had built and placed in his bedroom closet

Andrew, who enjoys VHF and UHF operations, tried and tried and was finally successful in making his own contact with the space station using his handheld radios and portable directional antenna He also has participated in training astronauts at the Johnson Space Center on ARISS contacts with schools, conducting simulated contacts with them, playing the role of the school students

Andrew has also been quite active with public service events through the Clear Lake Amateur Radio Club in suburban Houston where he is immediate past vice president He is also a member of the Seabrook Citizen's Emergency Response Team

Among his other achievements is creating his own bicycle mobile setup:

"I had tried putting a handi-talkie on my bike and I wasn't impressed with the results because the rubber duck just didn't get out as far as I wanted to," Andrew recalled "A couple months before, I had ordered my first mobile rig (radio), the FT-7800

"And, actually a couple weeks before I decided to put it all together on the bike, I had bought a brand new gel cell battery So, I thought, you know, hey I've got this remote that came free with the radio, I've got the battery, I've got an antenna, I got everything I need to make it happen So, I just mounted it all on the bike with zip ties and I had 50 watts mobile on a bike for VHF and UHF "

That attracted some attention from CQ magazine, which was looking for photo ideas for its 2008 calendar Photographer Larry Mulvehill (WB2ZPI) visited Houston and Andrew's bicycle mobile became the calendar photo for September 2008 He and his bedroom-closet IRLP node will be featured the cover of the September 2009 issue of CQ magazine

Andrew is going into his sophomore year at Clear Lake High School where he is a member of the school's marching band He is also into computers and creating websites and he maintains his own website started when he was in middle school Check out www thathamkid com It offers kid-friendly information about ham radio, along with a jokes page and a lot more about Andrew's activities in amateur radio - including his working satellites

His mentor and nominator for this award, Nick Lance, KC5KBO, summed it up best when he said: "Andrew has truly been an outstanding student of amateur radio He is an inspiration both to his fellow students and to hams of all ages "

Award Ceremony

The 2009 Amateur Radio NewslineÃ‚Â™ "Young Ham of the Year Award" will be presented to Andrew Koenig, KE5GDB, on Saturday, August 15th, 2009 at the Huntsville Hamfest in Huntsville, Alabama As the 2009 "Young Ham of the Year," Andrew will receive -- courtesy of Vertex-Standard -- an expense-paid trip to the Huntsville Hamfest, along with a gift of Yaesu brand ham radio equipment CQ magazine will treat him to an expense-paid week at Spacecamp Huntsville, and will present Andrew with a variety of CQ products Amateur Radio NewslineÃ‚Â™ will provide Andrew with a commemorative plaque at the award ceremony Once again, the cost of year's plaque has been underwritten by Dave Bell (W6AQ), President of DBA Entertainment Inc , Hollywood California Heil Sound Ltd will also be presenting Andrew with a ham radio related gift

The presentation of the award as a regular feature of the Huntsville Hamfest has been made possible through the generosity and kindness of the event's Planning Committee and the good offices of Huntsville Hamfest Association Vice President Charlie Emerson, N4OKL (See http://www hamfest org)

This year's award ceremony will be hosted by Don Wilbanks (AE5DW) of Amateur Radio NewslineÃ‚Â™ along with representatives of corporate underwriters Vertex-Standard and CQ Communications, Inc

Award Program Background

The Amateur Radio NewslineÃ‚Â™ "Young Ham of the Year" award (formerly the Westlink Report Young Ham of the Year Award ) has been presented annually since 1986 to a licensed radio amateur (Ham) who is 18 years of age or younger and who has provided outstanding service to the nation, his/her community or the betterment of the state of the art in communications through the Amateur Radio hobby/service It maintains a website will full information on the award program and background material located at http://www arnewsline org

Award Sponsors

The award program is jointly sponsored by the Los Angeles, California-based Amateur Radio NewslineÃ‚Â™ with corporate support from Vertex-Standard Corporation of Cerritos, California and CQ Magazine of Hicksville, NY

Since 1976, the Southern California-based Amateur Radio NewslineÃ‚Â™ and its predecessor, the Westlink Radio Network, have been providing radio amateurs around the world with up-to-the-minute news at no cost to them Amateur Radio NewslineÃ‚Â™ also co-sponsors with the Quarter Century Wireless Association the "Roy Neal, K6DUE, Amateur Radio Mentoring Project" that serves as a clearinghouse to match radio amateurs in need of educational assistance on the hobby with those able to aid them (See http://www arnewsline org)

The award's two corporate underwriters are world leaders in their respective areas of Amateur Radio product support

Vertex-Standard Corporation is considered the trailblazer in the design, manufacture and distribution of high quality Vertex-Standard commercial two-way radio, monitoring and air-band communications equipment along with its Standard Horizon marine electronics line and Yaesu brand Amateur Radio equipment The Yaesu name is known world-wide among ham radio aficionados and is synonymous with premium quality ham radio gear (See http://www vertexstandard com)

CQ Magazine and its sister publications, CQ VHF, Popular Communications and WorldRadio Online, are published by CQ Communications, Inc , and are considered the trend-setting publications serving todayÃ‚Â’s modern radio amateur (See http://www cq-amateur-radio com)

[ANS thanks Newsline for the above information]

/EX

SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-214 04 DRAGONSat Deployed From STS-127

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 214 04 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD August 2, 2009 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-214 04

DRAGONSat, the Dual RF Astrodynamic GPS Orbital Navigator Satellite, was deployed from from the cargo bay of STS-127 after the shuttle departed from the International Space Station The DRAGONSat mission consists of two satellites, BEVO-1 and AggieSat-2

BEVO-1 Downlink Information: Beacon Mode Downlink Freq: 437 325 MHz Modulation: FM, 200mW, Morse Code, ~20 WPM

Data Mode Downlink Freq: 437 325 MHz Modulation: GMSK, 1W, 9600 baud, AX 25 (default) FM, 1W, Bell 202, AX 25 http://www utexas edu/news/2009/06/09/picosatellite/

AggieSat-2 http://aggiesat org/Home 436 250MHz

AggieSat2 operating mode uses a proprietary modem protocol as the main radio is a COTS data modem It appears the only way to decipher the code is to have a model MHX425 that can speak the proprietary language The radio data rate is actually at 19200 bps

Initial indications are that it appears Bevo and AggieSat are stuck together right now We are looking for aliveness confirmation until we can get the units in a stable state

[ANS thanks John, KE5JTG, for the above information]

/EX

SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-214 05 Satellite Shorts From All Over

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 214 05 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD August 2, 2009 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-214 05

Presentations from the AMSAT-UK Colloquium can be viewed at: http://www uk amsat org/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,278/
The Gator Amateur Radio Club at University of Florida has posted a tutorial for Downloading and Decoding CP6 satellite data using the KPC-9612 Plus TNC, ICOM-910, SatPC32 and CPX Data Decoder Soft- ware at http://www gatorradio org/CP6_tutorial pdf (Dr Jay Garlitz, AA4FL)
The Houston AMSAT Net now being heard on Echolink in the conference AMSAT Wednesday 0100UTC (Tuesday 8PM Central) has moved to a new IRC Channel (Internet Relay Chat) at: IRC Server: irc radiochat org PORT: 6667 Group: #amsat
A video replay of the ANDE deployment from STS-127 can be seen at: http://www youtube com/watch?v=B19rIEZwTJU
European and Mediterranean stations may wish to be on the lookout for Paulo, CT1ETE/P from grid IM57sc betweem August 1-7 on the VO-52, AO-27, SO-50 and AO-51 satellites Paulo plans to use a Yaesu FT-817ND and Arrow Antenna
Scientific American magazine has an article on-line, "Space Aged: 10 Spacecraft from Decades Past That Are Still Ticking" This slide show includes AO-7: http://preview tinyurl com/kuryu9
A very nice interactive web site covering the entire Apollo 11 mission can be found at: http://www wechoosethemoon org/

[ANS thanks everyone for the above information]

/EX

SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-214 06 ARISS Status - 27 July 2009

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 214 06 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD August 2, 2009 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-214 06

Upcoming School Contacts

An Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact has been scheduled for United Space School in Seabrook, Texas on Wednesday, August 5 at 13:47 UTC via telebridge station ON4ISS The school is a once a year session of high school students that meets annually in the NASA/Clear Lake Area These students come from around the world for a two week session, during which they stay with local host families while being mentored by astronauts, engineers, and scientists to design a mission to Mars as their team project Class sessions are held at the University of Houston at Clear Lake The contact will allow students to learn firsthand what the experience of spaceflight is like They may ask questions about the skills needed to be an astronaut, the effects of weightlessness on the body, the food eaten, leisure activities, etc They will use this knowledge in putting together their team project presentation, which they will present to the Houston space community at the end of their session

De Winne has ARISS Contact with Portuguese Students

On Tuesday, July 21, an Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact took place between students attending Escola E B 2/3 de S RomÃƒÂ£o do Coronado in Trofa, Portugal and Frank De Winne, ON1DWN on the ISS De Winne answered 16 questions put to him by the students Media coverage included two television stations and the event was highlighted in the evening news

De Winne Participates in ARISS Contact with Ugo Guidi

On Thursday, July 23, children from Ugo Guidi in Forte dei Marmi, Lucca, Italy participated in an Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact Frank De Winne, ON1DWN answered twenty questions posed to him by the students The audio and video were available on: www ondaforte tv OndaForteTV, local media and newspapers covered the event

ARISS Member Comments on Lunar Landing in EE Times

EE Times published a July 20 special edition that tells the lunar landing story from the viewpoint of a number of engineers Comments were included from a number of people who felt it was a very personal event in their lives Comments by Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) member Steve Bible, N7HPR may be found on page 44 See: http://www nxtbook com/nxtbooks/cmp/eetimes_apollo_20090720/index php

[ANS thanks Carol, KB3LKI, for the above information]

/EX

In addition to regular membership, AMSAT offers membership in the President's Club Members of the President's Club, as sustaining donors to AMSAT Project Funds, will be eligible to receive additional benefits Application forms are available from the AMSAT Office

73, This week's ANS Editor, Lee McLamb, KU4OS ku4os at amsat dot org

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