Happy 233rd Birthday America

I want to take this opportunity to wish all my fellow Americans a happy 233rd birthday. This holiday is courtesy of the millions of men and women who have served in uniform. So I also want to pass along a special shout out to our servicemen and women, and especially their families. Your service and sacrifice continues a long tradition of protecting and preserving the freedom and liberties we enjoy here in America. The old Chief salutes each of you and may God keep you safe and out of harms way.

Fair Winds and Following Seas. Bravo Zulu.

Space Station Marathon

If you've never seen a spaceship with your own eyes, now's your chance.

The International Space Station (ISS) is about to make a remarkable series of flybys over the United States. Beginning this 4th of July weekend, the station will appear once, twice, and sometimes three times a day for many days in a row. No matter where you live, you should have at least a few opportunities to see the biggest spaceship ever built.

Check NASA's ISS Tracker for flyby times at your location.

The ISS has been under construction for nearly 11 years, and it has grown very large and very bright. The station is now more than 350 ft wide (wider than a football field), has 12,600 cubic feet of labs and living quarters, and on Earth would weigh about 670,000 lb. Sunlight illuminating the massive outpost makes it shine fifteen times brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.

Sometimes it is even brighter than that. Sunlight glinting from the station's flat surfaces (mainly solar arrays) produce dazzling flares as much as six hundred times brighter than Sirius. For astronomers: On the scale of visual magnitudes, space station flares register -8.

"The station flared spectacularly on May 22nd when it passed over my backyard observatory in the Netherlands," reports amateur astronomer Quintus Oostendorp. "I knew the ISS was coming, so I had my telescope ready and I was able see exactly what happened."

At present, the flares are unpredictable. No one knows when they will happen or exactly how bright they will be. Any given flyby could be interrupted by one — and that's what makes the watch so much fun.

The marathon of space station flybys won't stop until mid-to-late July (depending on your location). That gives space shuttle Endeavour, currently scheduled to launch on July 11th, time to reach the space station and join the show. As the shuttle approaches station for docking, many observers will witness a memorable double flyby — Endeavour and the ISS sailing side by side across the starry night sky.

Endeavour is on yet another space station construction mission. This time it will deliver a "space porch" to be added to Japan's Kibo science laboratory module. The porch is not a place where astronauts can sit, relax and watch the stars drift by (although that is not a bad idea); it is a science platform. When an experiment needs to be exposed to the hard vacuum or energetic radiation of space, it can placed outside on the porch to take advantage of the space station's unique research environment. The official name of the porch is the Kibo Japanese Experiment Module Exposed Facility and it will add its own small contribution to the station's reflected luminosity in the night sky.

What now? Check for flyby times, ready your telescope (optional), and let the sightings begin.

Both of my binoculars are at the ready and I look forward to catching the ISS crossing our mountain skies.

For my local office here is a list of ISS passes over southwest North Carolina (obs based on a Murphy NC viewing site).

SATELLITE LOCAL DURATION MAX ELEV APPROACH DEPARTURE
DATE/TIME (MIN) (DEG) (DEG-DIR) (DEG-DIR)

ISS Sun Jul 05/05:53 AM 2 24 10 above NNW 24 above NNE
ISS Mon Jul 06/10:41 PM 6 54 10 above WSW 10 above NE
ISS Tue Jul 07/05:07 AM 5 26 10 above NNW 11 above E
ISS Tue Jul 07/09:31 PM 5 33 11 above SSW 11 above ENE
ISS Tue Jul 07/11:07 PM 4 17 10 above WNW 10 above NNE
ISS Wed Jul 08/05:31 AM 5 74 10 above NW 12 above SE
ISS Wed Jul 08/09:55 PM 5 50 10 above WSW 12 above NE
ISS Thu Jul 09/04:21 AM 5 28 10 above NNW 10 above E
ISS Thu Jul 09/05:56 AM 4 16 10 above W 10 above S
ISS Thu Jul 09/10:23 PM 1 15 15 above NNW 11 above N
ISS Fri Jul 10/04:49 AM 1 30 30 above SSE 12 above SE
ISS Sat Jul 11/09:38 PM 1 14 14 above NNW 10 above N

Tracking Resources
NASA http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/
Heaven's Above http://heavens-above.com/
Simple Flybys http://spaceweather.com/flybys

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips Credit: Science@NASA

A pair of Tucson brothers aim to render police scanners obsolete.

Information from: Arizona Daily Star (http://www.azstarnet.com/ ) and the SCAN-L newsgroup (James Richardson).

Parker and Marshall Minardo, owners of a software company called EdgeRift, created a $1 iPhone application called Emergency Radio that gives users ccess to more than 1,200 radio feeds from police, fire and emergency frequencies around the country.

Within days of its launch in early May, the application shot up to No. 2 on Apple's list of paid applications. As of Friday, Emergency Radio was still ranked in the top 40.9

More than 180,000 iPhone and iPod Touch owners have downloaded Emergency Radio, and the application is currently averaging between 1,000 and 1,200 downloads per day, said 20-year-old Parker, Edgerift's CEO.

The Minardos who run the business out of their Tucson home keep 70 cents from each sale, so the application is making the brothers flush with cash.

"Maybe we'll go out to breakfast," deadpanned Marshall, 26, the company president. "We haven't made any plans to celebrate. We're just trying to keep it going."

A free version of the application, which lets you listen to emergency feeds in a few big cities, has been downloaded 80,000 times.

The application taps into the groundwork laid by ScanAmerica part of the RadioReference.com network which streams the scanner feeds. Emergency Radio makes the feeds easy to access on the iPhone and also lists the police, fire and rescue squads' codes and their definitions so you can understand what the emergency workers are talking about.

EdgeRift was not exactly an overnight success.

It all started in 2001, when Parker started developing applications for personal digital assistants.

He and Marshall formed a business called PDA Performance that found limited success selling applications that organized contacts and streamlined the user interface.

In 2004, the company moved to Tucson so Marshall could earn a political science degree from the University of Arizona. The brothers relaunched the company as EdgeRift in February 2008 and shifted the focus to developing software for the burgeoning iPhone.

"All the top apps were entertainment and games, and we were thinking of what would be fun and exciting on the iPhone," Parker said. "It kind of occurred to us that with all the online feeds from emergency and police scanners, there was no easy way to access them and play them on the iPhone.

We thought it would be great if we could do that."

It took the duo four weeks to put the application together, with Parker handling programming while Marshall worked on logistics, such as customer support and day-to-day operations. Apple approved the application on April 18 and released it in early May.

Emergency Radio caught fire, picking up 50 sales the first day, then doubling for the next several days.

"It appeals to so many different people out there," Parker said. "Policemen and firemen are e-mailing us, and they're so excited they love it. It really worked out well."

The Minardos will release a free update to the program next month and are considering working on a version for the BlackBerry. The brothers say they work 80 hours a week and are considering renting out an office and hiring one or more employees to help with the workload.

"It's very strange," Marshall said. "We worked very hard for this one. We never expected anything like this. It's just unbelievable."

Multipsk to add Mil-Std 188-110A

Fans of Multipsk will be happy to know that Patrick, F6CTE, developer of the program, is in the process of adding the Mil-Std-188-110A serial modem mode to the popular decoding software. This mode will become part of the professional package and not the freeware version.

Mil-Std 188-110a is a mode commonly used by various military services, including the US Department of Defense services, US Coast Guard, the Chinese military, Mexican Navy, Swedish Navy, the Australian ADF-HFCS, Austria Navy, Swiss diplo nets, Georgia military, Venezuela Army/Navy, and the Spanish Navy to name a few. Since the Skysweep software is going away in the near future, this is very welcomed news. Patrick's program just keeps getting better and is very reasonably priced to het the professional modes.

You can learn more about the Mil-Std-188-110A mode at
http://pubs.drdc.gc.ca/PDFS/unc03/p518678.pdf

You can also learn more about this mode in Joerg Klingenfuss' Radio Data Code Manual available from our friends at Universal Radio via the link below
http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/books/5104.html

You can hear an audio sample on the Taunus Signals website at
http://www.signals.taunus.de/TABLES/VOCODER.HTML

Here are the current modes decoded by the Multipsk software:

Phase Shift Keying modes:
BPSK: BPSK31-63-125-250 / CHIP (64/128) / PSK10 / PSKFEC31 / PSKAM10-31-50
BPSK with SSTV: PSK63 F - PSK220F + DIGISSTV "Run"
QPSK: QPSK31-63-125-250
MPSK: MT63
PACKET BPSK1200-250-63 + APRS+ DIGISSTV "Run"

On-Off Keying Modes:
CW / CCW-OOK / CCW-FSK / QRSS

Frequency Shift Keying modes:
PACKET: 110-300-1200 bauds + APRS+ DIGISSTV "Run"
PACTOR 1 / AMTOR FEC-Navtex / AMTOR ARQ / SITOR A
ASCII / RTTY 45-50-75-100-110-150-200 / SYNOP + SHIP
1382 / GMDSS DSC / ACARS (VHF) / DGPS

Multi Frequency Shift Keying modes:
MFSK8 / MFSK16 (+SSTV)
OLIVIA / Contestia / RTTYM / VOICE
THROB/THROBX
DominoF / DominoEX
PAX / PAX2
Automatic Link Establishment (see http://www.hflink.com) MIL-STD-188-141A+
ARQ FAE / ALE400 + ARQ FAE
DTMF, SELCAL
JT65 (A B and C)

Hellschreiber modes:
FELD HELL / FM HELL(105-245) / PSK HELL / HELL 80

Graphic modes:
HF FAX / SSTV / PSK SSTV modes (mentioned above) / MFSK116 SSTV (mentioned above)

DSP modes:
Filters / Analysis / Binaural CW reception

Identifiers:
Video ID / RS ID / Call ID

RTTY, CW, BPSK31, BPSK63 and PSKFEC31 Panoramics

TCP/IP digital modem

Integered SdR demodulator/modulator

You can learn more about the Multipsk family of software at
http://f6cte.free.fr/index_anglais.htm

If you are active on HF utes and you want to decode digital signals, Multipsk is a "must" download.

73 and good hunting de Larry

BTown Blog Logs 6/20/2009 - Update

Here are a few intercepts that I made this morning in the shack here in Btown. All times are UTC and freqs are kHz.

Rig Icom 706MKII, Antenna G5RV 80 meter version, 350 foot longwire, Decoders: Multipsk, Skysweep, Sigmira and others with Rigblaster Pro interface.

8566.0 Unknown military Stanag 4285 looks like a 300L 5N2 no decode at 1407.

8762.4 KPH Marine Coast San Francisco CA Global Wireless Radio Network GW-OFDM mode at 1304.

8672.4 WNU Marine Coast Sildell LA Global Wireless Radio Network GW-OFDMmode at 1405.

8675.5 VCS Marine Coast Halifax NS Global Wireless Radio Network GW-OFDM mode at 1403.

8697.0 Stanag 4285 transmission, probably CFH CanForce Halifax NS. No decode on Sigmira or Skysweep.

8878.0 WLO Mobile Radio AL with synthesized voice Alaska offshore weather then traffic list in USB at 1512 // 8806.0 kHz.

8806.0 WLO Mobile Radio AL with synthesized voice Alaska offshore weather and traffic list in USB at 1512 // 8788.0 kHz.

8831.0 Gander Radio NF working various aircraft (NAT-F MWARA) USB at 1502, weak.

8846.0 New York Radio NY working Jet Blue 787, American 69, and others for position reports, etc (CAR-A MWARA) at 1515 in USB.

8912.0 Cothen HF Network, USB/ALE burst at 1507.

8918.0 New York Radio NY working various aircraft, not as busy as 8846.0 (CAR-B MWARA). USB at 1520.

8983.0 NMN USCG CAMSLANT Chesapeake VA working CG 2129 with position report, echo heard indicating multiple transmitters selected by CAMSLANT. USB at 1504.

9010.0 US DoD Link-11 (TADIL-A) data signal, Mil-Std-188-203-1A at 1114.

9030.0 NAR USN Saddlebunch Key FL NATO-75 (RTTY) 850/75 KG-84 Encryption Stanag 4481 at 1118.

9084.6 NPG USN NRTF Dixon CA NATO-75 (RTTY) 850/75 KG-84 Encryption //5344.6 Stanag 4481 at 1120.

9121.0 US DoD Link-11 (TADIL-A) data signal, Mil-Std-188-203-1A at 1124.

9215.0 US DoD NATO-75 (RTTY) 850/75 KG-84 Encryption Stanag 4481 at 1133. May be a NAR xmsn.

9265.0 WINB SWBC Red Lion PA SS Religious broadcast AM at 1140.

9276.9 Unid SS OMs with lots of talk about some sort of activity tomorrow (6/21) at 11:44.

9345.0 Voice of Korea SWBC Pyongyang AM broadcasting nearly continuous Chinese music, station announcement by YL in Mandrin at 1155 then off at 1157. Weak here in BTown. At 1200 broadcast resumed in Korean language with the Song of Kim Il Sung then ID then DPRK National Anthem followed by news by OM/YL.

9370.0 WTJC SWBC Newport NC AM at 1206 with the Calvary Hour religious broadcast in English.

9430.0 FEBC SWBC Bocaue PHL AM at 1220, weak with religious music and OM/YL announcers in either Chinese or Mandrin (to weak to really tell).

9459.0 ZKLF Meteo Auckland NZL FAX Meteo Products: 1200 SW Pacific MSL Prog H+30 chart from 1215-1230.

9475.0 Radio Australia SWBC Shepparton AM in English with Saturday Night Country music program in English at 1235.

10000.0 WWV US STFS Fort Collins CO Standard Time and Frequency Station usual tic toc format at 1535.

10000.0 WWVH US STFS Kekaha HI Standard Time and Frequency Station usual tic toc format in AM u/WWV at 1540.

10051.0 WSY 70 VOLMET New York NY NAT VOLMET with aviation weather for various US airports in USB at 1530.

10426.3 Unknown military NATO-75 75/850 at 1542.

10945.0 CFH CanForce Halifax Military NS RTTY 850/75 ITA-2 Baudot marker "DE CFH ZKR F1 2812 3287 4158 8324 12371 16552 AR" at 1651.

11330.0 New York Radio NY working various aircraft (follows) for position reports, etc (CAR-B MWARA) at 1655 in USB. Other freq in use 8918.0 kHz. Air Canada 948, American 1416, Speedbird 253, Cactus 1018, American 412, American 834 (Selcal bp-em), and Cactus 1209.

11550.0 WEWN SWBC EWTN Vandiver AL with SS rosary religious program at 1715.

11610.0 Voice of Russia SWBC Moscow RUS with English to the Middle East, classical music YL anncr, fair signals at 1732.

11655.0 Radio Ibrahim, two OMs chatting away in Arabic at 1745, several references to the Internet. Gave URL at end of broadcast as www.radioibrahim.com, off at 1800.

11685.5 Unknown military NATO-75 75/850 at 1809. Very strong, probably transmitting from North America (Cutler ME?).

11775.0 Worldwide University Network SWBC Anguilla, with Pastor Melissa Scott preaching at 1815.

11930.0 Radio Marti SWBC Greenville NC with SS programming and music, heavy broadband jamming at 1826.

11965.0 Deutsche Welle SWBC Kigali Rwanda relay with programming in Hausa by YL and full ID in Hausa at 1825.

11990.0 Radio Kuwait SWBC Kuwait City with English rock songs You are my only one, That'll be the day, at 1857. Full English ID at top of the hour by YL.

12052.5 Unknown military NATO-75 75/850 at 1907.

12120.0 Unknown military NATO-75 75/850 at 1908.

12133.5 AFN Key West FL in USB with a discussion about the qualifications of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

12160.0 WWCR SWBC Nashville TN with the Worldwide Country Radio program in English at 1915.

12581.5 WLO Marine Coast Mobile Radio AL SITOR idler/CW ID (callsign only) at 1920.

12584.5 WLO Marine Coast Mobile Radio AL SITOR idler/CW ID (callsign only) at 1922.

12590.5 KLB Marine Coast Seattle Radio WA SITOR idler/CW ID (callsign only) at 1923 (weak).

Will probably post some more later this evening if the heat doesn't run me out of the shack.

73 de Jefe

Mystery of the Missing Sunspots, Solved?

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

The sun is in the pits of a century-class solar minimum, and sunspots have been puzzlingly scarce for more than two years. Now, for the first time, solar physicists might understand why.

At an American Astronomical Society press conference today in Boulder, Colorado, researchers announced that a jet stream deep inside the sun is migrating slower than usual through the star's interior, giving rise to the current lack of sunspots.

Rachel Howe and Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona, used a technique called helioseismology to detect and track the jet stream down to depths of 7,000 km below the surface of the sun. The sun generates new jet streams near its poles every 11 years, they explained to a room full of reporters and fellow scientists. The streams migrate slowly from the poles to the equator and when a jet stream reaches the critical latitude of 22 degrees, new-cycle sunspots begin to appear.



Above: A helioseismic map of the solar interior. Tilted red-yellow bands trace solar jet streams. Black contours denote sunspot activity. When the jet streams reach a critical latitude around 22 degrees, sunspot activity intensifies. [larger image] [more graphics]

Howe and Hill found that the stream associated with the next solar cycle has moved sluggishly, taking three years to cover a 10 degree range in latitude compared to only two years for the previous solar cycle.

The jet stream is now, finally, reaching the critical latitude, heralding a return of solar activity in the months and years ahead.

"It is exciting to see", says Hill, "that just as this sluggish stream reaches the usual active latitude of 22 degrees, a year late, we finally begin to see new groups of sunspots emerging."

The current solar minimum has been so long and deep, it prompted some scientists to speculate that the sun might enter a long period with no sunspot activity at all, akin to the Maunder Minimum of the 17th century. This new result dispells those concerns. The sun's internal magnetic dynamo is still operating, and the sunspot cycle is not "broken."

Because it flows beneath the surface of the sun, the jet stream is not directly visible. Hill and Howe tracked its hidden motions via helioseismology. Shifting masses inside the sun send pressure waves rippling through the stellar interior. So-called "p modes" (p for pressure) bounce around the interior and cause the sun to ring like an enormous bell. By studying the vibrations of the sun's surface, it is possible to figure out what is happening inside. Similar techniques are used by geologists to map the interior of our planet.

In this case, researchers combined data from GONG and SOHO. GONG, short for "Global Oscillation Network Group," is an NSO-led network of telescopes that measures solar vibrations from various locations around Earth. SOHO, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, makes similar measurements from space.

"This is an important discovery," says Dean Pesnell of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "It shows how flows inside the sun are tied to the creation of sunspots and how jet streams can affect the timing of the solar cycle."

There is, however, much more to learn.

"We still don't understand exactly how jet streams trigger sunspot production," says Pesnell. "Nor do we fully understand how the jet streams themselves are generated."

To solve these mysteries, and others, NASA plans to launch the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) later this year. SDO is equipped with sophisticated helioseismology sensors that will allow it to probe the solar interior better than ever before.

The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on SDO will improve our understanding of these jet streams and other internal flows by providing full disk images at ever-increasing depths in the sun," says Pesnell.

Continued tracking and study of solar jet streams could help researchers do something unprecedented--accurately predict the unfolding of future solar cycles. Stay tuned for that!

New Russian Amateur Radio Satellite in Orbit

New article from the ARRL website:

A Russian rocket launched from Plesetsk on May 23 carried a number of payloads to orbit, including a new Amateur Radio satellite named Yubileiny -- Russian for jubilee -- since christened Radio Sputnik 30 (RS-30). Operational details are vague at this time. Amateurs throughout the world report receiving signals at 435.315 and 435.215 MHz; some report reception of CW telemetry while others report what appear to be image transmissions from the satellite. RS-30 is orbiting at a maximum altitude of 1500 km, creating a substantial communications footprint below. The satellite will broadcast audio and video about the history of the Soviet and Russian space programs, as well as signals imitating those broadcast by Sputnik in 1957. According to the satellite's launch team, "The motive for development of the Yubileiny small spacecraft was the 50th anniversary of the first space satellite. With the help of that satellite, the new space systems and equipment are expected to get flight qualification, and radio-amateurs all over the world will be able to receive information on the history of space development and domestic cosmonautics achievements."

Additional information is available on DK3WN's website at
http://www.dk3wn.info/sat/afu/sat_rs30.shtml

You can see/hear an interesting video of the RS-30 satellite on You Tube at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxClA0ubFXw

NASA TV on DishNet

Loren, WA7SKT posted the following on the Hearsat newsgroup:

NASA TV on DishNet in U.S. is no longer available without subscription to programming. This is not due to difference in method of transmission of video and audio, but due to an upgrade of the smart card to combat piracy. NASA TV can still be viewed from the DishNet satellite with an FTA receiver, but no longer with an unscribed DishNet receiver.

Thanks Loren