Date: January 31st 2010

AMSAT NEWS SERVICE ANS-031

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: ans-editor@amsat org

In this edition:

2010 OSCAR SKN "Best Fist" Winners
ISS on SSTV This Week
How's Satellite DX? Pretty Good, Thanks for Asking
Sumbandila SO-67 Amateur Radio Operations Suspended
Building the First US ARISSAT-1 Flight Unit Begins
8 New Cubesats in Development

SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-031 01 2010 OSCAR SKN "Best Fist" Winners

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 031 01

From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD January 31, 2010 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-031 01

Ray Soifer, W2RS has compiled the Best Fist votes from AMSAT's Straight Key Night on OSCAR 2010 and reported the results this week Ray said, "We saw a great deal of activity throughout the world, with 'Best Fist' nominations coming in from four contin- ents " The following "Best Fist" winners, 23 in all, each received at least one nomination from someone they worked:

AA5PK, JA6SZV, JH7UJI, JO2ASQ, JR0EFE, K0RJS, N3TE, N3TL, N4ZQ, N5AFV, N7EQF, N9AMW, NR7Q, PV5AZ, PV8DX, PY2FFG, PY4ZBZ, WA5KBH, WA6ARA, WC7V, WD9EWK, 9A2EY, 9A5YY

As some will remember, at one time we used to award a "grand prize" to the participant who got the most nominations This was discontin- ued a few years ago, for fear of making the event too "competitive "
However, we have to make an exception this year: Glenn Miller, AA5PK, received a record six nominations Well done!

Many thanks to all who participated, and congratulations to all of our "Best Fist" winners

See you next year!

[ANS thanks Ray Soifer, W2RS for the above information]

/EX

SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-031 02 ISS on SSTV This Week

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 031 02

From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD January 31, 2010 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-031 02

This week the 145 800 MHz downlink from the International Space Station was active with the Slow Scan Television (SSTV) signals from the MAI-75 experiment On Wednesday, January 27 automated SSTV operations were con- ducted using the VC-H1 system transmitting a Robot-36 formatted picture once every 3 minutes worldwide between 0900 to 1400 UTC SSTV operations on Thursday, January 28, and Friday, January 29 were conducted using the PD-160 transmission format using MMSSTV and were generally focused toward ground stations in western Russia

SSTV images received by Amateur Radio Operators worldwide this week have been uploaded to the ARISS SSTV gallery at: http://www amsat org/amsat/ariss/SSTV/

The SSTV downlink on 145 800 from the ISS is transmitted in FM mode You can receive and decode these images at your station using freeware software You will need to connect the audio output from your 145 800 MHz receiver to an input on your computer's soundcard Depending on your radio and computer an audio interface may be required Plans for these are available via internet searches Others have reported success by simply connecting a speaker or headphone jack to their soundcard input and adjusting levels using the soundcard driver program's audio slider controls

One widely used SSTV software program is MMSSTV available at: http://mmhamsoft amateur-radio ca/ (MMSSTV 1 11G or later is recommen- ded)

The downlink signal from the ISS on 145 800 MHz is generally very strong and a full OSCAR class tracking system is not needed Many Amateur Radio operators are successful using a 2 meter vertical on the house roof

Tracking information for those who do not have a tracking program can be viewed on-line at: http://www amsat org/amsat-new/tools/predict/satloc php (and select the ISS as the object to be displayed)

[ANS thanks the ARISS team for the above information]

/EX

SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-031 03 How's Satellite DX? Pretty Good, Thanks for Asking

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 031 03

From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD January 31, 2010 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-031 03

January 16 - WC7V had a contact with RN1NW via AO-7 Mode B over a distance of 7659 KM Kerry, WC7V said, "I have hoped to make this contact for over 30 years The satellite was ascending at my QTH and was at about 3 degrees elevation at the end of our QSO "
January 18 - ZS6BB had a contact with EA6SA via AO-7 Mode B over a distance of 7,766 KM This contact was conducted via SSB
January 23 - N3TL and KL7XJ had a contact on HO-68 in FM Tim, N3TL said, "At the time, the satellite was below 4 5 degrees and descending for me I'm thrilled to put state No 49 in the log with my handheld station "
January 24 - Piraja PS8RF had a contact with EA4CYQ in SSB via the linear transponder through HO-68 This is believed to be the first SSB contact between South America and Europe on this satellite over a distance 7,477 KM Juan Antonio, EA4CYQ wrote, "After that I worked Canada VE2DWE and several USA stations KB1RVT, K3SZH and KC9ELU
January 25 - K3SZH with PY2OV on SSB via AO-7 The distance between the two stations was 7738 KM PS8RF recorded the contact and posted a short video at: http://www youtube com/watch?v=gS4Mdl-P6X4
Schedule update for VP8 South Shetland Islands AO-51 operation The DNXL Newsletter #1660 (Jan 27, 2010) reports that XR9JA will now be active between February 1 - 28 This operation was originally planned for January but has been re-scheduled Their QTH will be the Chilean naval base "Arturo Prat" on Greenwich Island belonging to the South Shetland archipelago (AN-010) Their QSL manager is CE5JA (via bureau or direct) and more information can be found on their website: http://www ce5ja cl
FO-29 seems to be recovering well On January 24 Rowland K4XD heard strong signals while copying his own CW signal with no one else on the satellite On January 27 Mike, DK3WN reported strong signals received from FO-29
January 28 - ZS6WB in Pretoria, South Africa copied a double-hop signal from I8CVS in Italy Dom, I8CVS was uplinking to AO-7 on 432 158 MHz which translated out on 145 940 MHz on AO-7 The sig- nal on 145 940 from AO-7 was received as an input on FO-29, and translated to 435 840 MHz output on FO-29 Hal, ZS6WB said he copied a good signal via 435 840 MHz for several minutes

[ANS thanks everyone for the above information]

/EX

SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-031 04 Sumbandila SO-67 Amateur Radio Operations Suspended

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 031 04

From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD January 31, 2010 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-031 04

The Sumbandila Satellite Operations at SunSpace in South Africa said this week that Amateur Radio Operations via SO-67 must be suspended temporarily due to system commissioning requirements of the main payload

The message said after handover of operations of the commissioned payloads the Satellite Applications Center plans return SO-67 back to scheduled Amateur Radio operation in the middle-March to early- April, 2010 timeframe

[ANS thanks Jan-Albert Koekemoer for the above information]

/EX

SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-031 05 Building the First US ARISSAT-1 Flight Unit Begins

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 031 05

From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD January 31, 2010 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-031 05

Gould Smith, WA4SXM writing on behalf of the ARISSAT-1 team said construction of the flight unit begins next week when Tony Monteiro, AA2TX begins electronic assembly of the first US flight unit for ARISSat

The ARISSAT-1 team has had prototypes working for months The enclo- sures have been painted by NASA and the cables prepared by Larry Brown, N7LB The flight boards were built by the Microchip ARISSat team and Chuck Green, N0ADI, with Chuck checking all the flight units

Lou McFadin, W5DID has nearly assembled a complete flight structure designed by Bob Davis, KF4KSS Lou expects to exhibit the structure in the AMSAT Booth at the upcoming Orlando HamCation The first two flight TX/RX/Command receiver modules from Bill Ress, N6GHZ are due to arrive next week

We just found out that ARISSat will receive a new callsign and some additional Russian greetings will be added We will have more than 25 international greetings from around the world in twelve languages broadcast on the FM downlink In addition to the greetings will be voice ID, voice telemetry values, SSTV images, CW signals, new 1k BPSK signal by Phil Karn, KA9Q sending full telemetry and experiment data and a 16 kHz wide transponder Kurst State University in Russia is providing the experiment and the Silver-Zinc battery for the mission

The ARISSAT-1 team will start system testing and Flight Safety reviews soon and plans to ship two flight units to Russia in the spring

[ANS thanks Gould Smith, WA4SXM and the ARISSAT-1 Team for the above information]

/EX

SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-031 06 8 New Cubesats in Development

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 031 06

From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD January 31, 2010 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-031 06

Four CubeSats from Japan are planned to launch on 20 May 2010 aboard the JAXA PLANET-C mission to Venus

UNITEC-1, NPO UNISEC (University Space Engineering Consortium) will fly to Venus This will provide Amateur Radio operators a deep space beacon for experimentation on 5 8GHz More information is at: http://www unisec jp/unitec-1/en/top html

Negai*", developed by Soka University will remain in low-earth orbit with a 437 305 MHz CW, Packet 1200bps FSK AX 25 downlink More infor- mation is at: http://kuro t soka ac jp/main html

WASEDA-SAT2, developed by Waseda University will remain in low-earth orbit with a 437 485 MHz CW(FM), PCM-FSK(FM) 9600bps downlink More information is at: http://www miyashita mmech waseda ac jp/Waseda-Sat2/index htm

KSAT, developed by Kagoshima University will remain in low-earth orbit with an uplink: S-band (2GHz, 10kbps) and downlink: Ku-band(13 275GHz, 10kbps/1Mbps) More information is at: http://www sci kagoshima-u ac jp/~nishio/download/Ukaren2008Nishio pdf

NASA plans to launch 3 CubeSats with Amateur Radio payloads The satellites are manifested as an auxiliary payload on the Taurus XL launch vehicle for NASA's Glory Climate Mission, planned for liftoff in late November, 2010

Montana State designated its satellite as Explorer 1 Prime, or E1P The name honors the launch and scientific discoveries of the Explorer-1 mission, which detected the Van Allen radiation belts more than 50 years ago E1P will carry a miniature Geiger tube to measure the intensity and variability of the electrons in the Van Allen belts This satellite will use 437 505 MHz as its downlink See: http://www amsat org uk/iaru/finished_detail asp?serial=116

Colorado's satellite is named Hermes Its mission is to improve CubeSat communications through the on-orbit testing of a high data-rate communi- cation system that will allow the downlink of large quantities of data The planned downlink frequency is 437 425 MHz See: http://www amsat org uk/iaru/finished_detail asp?serial=104

The Kentucky vehicle is called KySat-1 KySat, is believed to be the first CubeSat to carry a 2m to 70cm FM repeater It includes a camera to support a scientific outreach program intended for, but not limited to, Kentucky students in kindergarten through 12th grade The satellite also has a 2 4 gigahertz industrial, scientific and medical band radio, which will be used to test high-bandwidth communications in the license free portion of the S-band KySat-1 plans to use 145 850 MHz FM uplink and 436 975 MHz FM downlink See: http://www amsat org uk/iaru/finished_detail asp?serial=102

The Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) in South Africa F'SATI post graduate program in Satellite Engineering announced plans for the development of an academic project which will develop and launch a 3U cubesat The payloads will include a camera, a parrot repeater and a transponder In partnership with the Hermanus Magnetic Observatory, a HF beacon will be included to assist the HMO to calibrate their radar systems in the Antarctic A new type of magnetometer is also under con- sideration The project plans to have a flight ready display in October 2011 when the International Astronomy Conference is held in Cape Town

[ANS thanks Mineo Wakita, JE9PEL; SouthGate Amateur Radio News 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 And, with that please keep in mind when the artist was questioned about his vehicle being stalled by the side of the road his reply was, "I had no Monet to buy Degas to make the Van Gogh "

73, This week's ANS Editor, JoAnne Maenpaa, K9JKM K9JKM at amsat dot org

Via the ANS mailing list courtesy of AMSAT-NA http://amsat org/mailman/listinfo/ans

The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription:

You are subscribed to the following list: [list_name]

using the following email: example@example.com

You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL:

http://www aus-city com/cgi-bin/dada/mail cgi/u/RADIOCOMM_LIST/

If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism

You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen:

<[program_url]/list/[list]>

If you're still having trouble, please contact the list owner at: