The AMSAT News Service bulletins are a
free, weekly news and information service of AMSAT North America, The Radio
Amateur Satellite Corporation. ANS publishes news related to Amateur Radio in
Space including 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.
The news feed on
http://www.amsat.org publishes news of
Amateur Radio in Space as soon as our volunteers can post it.
Please
send any amateur satellite news or reports to: ans-editor at
amsat.org.
In this edition:
* Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, 2017 Dayton
Hamvention Amateur of the Year
* VUCC Awards for February 2017
* On-line
Information Sessions for ARISS-US School Contact Proposals
* Ham radio
satellite activation of Berry Islands, Bahamas
* NASA Explores Opportunity
for Smaller Experiments to 'Hitch a Ride' to Mars
* Belize on
Satellite
* October Amateur Radio Satellites Activation of Sint Maarten
Announced
* Nayif-1 Status Report and New Dashboard
* ARISS News
*
Satellite Shorts From All Over
SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-064.01
ANS-064
AMSAT News Service Weekly Bulletins
AMSAT News Service Bulletin
064.01
From AMSAT HQ KENSINGTON, MD.
March 5, 2017
To All RADIO
AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-064.01
Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, 2017 Dayton
Hamvention Amateur of the Year
The Dayton Hamvention has announced the
winners of the 2017 Hamvention Awards. Each year, the Dayton Hamvention
honors radio amateurs who have made major contributions to the art and
science of amateur radio. AMSAT Vice President for Human Spaceflight
Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, was named 2017 Amateur of the Year.
The award
citation reads:
“Frank serves as the Amateur Radio on the International
Space Station (ARISS) international chairman. In the mid-1990s,
Bauer proposed a GPS reception experiment on the AMSAT Phase 3D
satellite (AO-40). The experiment was to measure the signal strength of the
GPS satellite constellation while Phase 3D was in high-Earth orbit
(HEO). The AO-40 experiment subsequently has been cited often in
aerospace literature, as it remained the most comprehensive
above-the-
constellation data source for nearly a decade and led to changes
in the system’s specifications and applications. The results of the AO-40
experiment jump started a game-changing transformation in
navigation at
HEO/GEO altitudes, enabling new and exciting missions in these
orbits.
Bauer holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aeronautics
and astronautics from Purdue University. His career in aerospace spans
4 decades within NASA and in private industry
Bauer has been licensed
since 1974. In 1983, in preparation for the space mission of Owen Garriott,
W5LFL, he was responsible for setting up and operating the worldwide
retransmission of Space Shuttle air-to-ground communications from Goddard
Amateur Radio Club station WA3NAN.
This initiative provided a critical
conduit of information to hams attempting to contact astronaut-hams in the
pre-Internet era.”
The 2017 Dayton Hamvention Award winners are listed
at
http://hamvention.org/event-details/awards/[ANS
thanks Dayton Hamvention via the ARRL for the above
information]
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VUCC
Awards for February 2017
Congratulations to the following satellite
operators who were awarded endorsements for Satellite VUCC by the ARRL
during the period 1Feb2017 thru
1Mar2017:
WA4NVM-1413
KD8CAO-1200
W5PFG-982
N8RO-918
N7SFI-829
K4FEG-711
N8HM-608
N4UFO-601
KG5CCI-452
N9IP-417
K5ND-200
W7QL-180
W4DTA-151
AI6GS-136
N6RFM-107
There
were 2 new VUCC awards:
WI7P - 829
AK4WQ (EN34) - 106
The ARRL VUCC
Award is the most prestigious and sought after award for satellite
operators. The award is what inspires all of the roving activity here in the
United States and around the world. A special thanks to all rovers who
make the effort to operate away from home. The Central States VHF Society
sponsors the reverse VUCC award for rovers who operate in 100 or more grids
away from home. Some of our current rovers are already eligible or close to
being eligible for this award. Recipients so far include N7SFI, N5AFV, ND9M
and KD4ZGW. (as of 5July2016
www.csvhfs.org)
[ANS thanks John K8YSE
for the above
information]
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On-line
Information Sessions for ARISS-US School Contact Proposals
ARISS-US is
accepting proposals from U.S. schools, museums, science centers and community
youth organizations (working individually or together) to host an Amateur
Radio on the International Space Station, or ARISS, radio contact with an
orbiting space station crew member between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2018.
Proposals are due April 15, 2017.
Informational Sessions
To help
organizations learn about ARISS radio contacts and the proposal process,
ARISS offers one-hour online information sessions and welcomes all questions.
Attending an online session is not
required but strongly
encouraged.
Informational sessions will be offered March 6, 2017, at 7
p.m. EST and March 16, 2017, at 4 p.m. EDT.
Advance registration is
necessary. Email ARISS (
ariss@arrl.org)
to sign up for an information session.
For proposal information and
more details such as expectations, proposal guidelines and proposal forms,
visit
http://www.arrl.org/hosting-an-ariss-contact.
Please
email questions about this opportunity to
ariss@arrl.org.
ARISS-US is offered
through a partnership between NASA, the American Radio Relay League, and the
Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation. ARISS was created and is managed by an
international working group.
[ANS thanks ARISS and NASA Education Express
Message -- March 2, 2017 for the above
information]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Ham
radio satellite activation of Berry Islands, Bahamas
Steve M1ACB, Rob
M0VFC and John M0IDA will be active on the FM and SSB amateur radio
satellites from Berry Islands in the Bahamas.
The trio plan to operate
from March 4-10 and will be using hand-held antennas. Since the FM satellites
will only cover part of the USA they’ll also be using SSB on FO-29 to reach
the British Isles and Europe.
They will be operating from Little
Harbour Cay in the Berry Islands, IOTA NA-054, Grid Square FL15do.
For
further information see
https://m1acb.wordpress.com/2017/02/18/1527/[ANS
thanks AMSAT-UK for the above
information]
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NASA
Explores Opportunity for Smaller Experiments to 'Hitch a Ride' to
Mars
NASA's goals for human deep space exploration are complex
and ambitious. To maximize resources as it pushes the boundaries of
exploration, the agency is exploring opportunities to take advantage of
emerging private sector space capabilities.
NASA released a request for
information Monday regarding possible commercial sources to fly limited
payloads on planned, non-NASA missions to Mars. The agency will use the
responses to gather market data on the complete spectrum of commercial plans,
and identify any excess capacity that may exist for NASA
payloads.
Furthering NASA's human deep space exploration goals will
require a significant amount of scientific research, and opportunities
to collect data on Mars have been rare. Only seven successful missions to
the surface of Mars have taken place in the history of
space flight.
Evolving capabilities in the private sector have opened
the possibility for NASA to take advantage of commercial opportunities to
land scientific payloads on the surface of the Red Planet. Such capability
would provide an additional method of acquiring science and engineering data
concerning Mars, and would complement NASA's current deep space exploration
efforts.
[ANS thanks
www.marsdaily.com for the above
information]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Belize
on Satellite
Good evening to my fellow people of the birds,
The
time has come. I will be venturing to the land of Belize March 11-19 and will
be on the satellites with the call V31NJ. I will operate from various grids
and possibly some islands (a side trip to
Roatan, Honduras is possible with
operations from there, not positive yet). This is gonna be a vacation style
op (going with my little brother for his spring break), so don't expect me on
every pass.
If I can get a permit for Guatemala TG/NJ7H may also be on a
few passes, though I'm not sure if from any grids different than
in Belize.
QSLing will be via LoTW. If there is a demand, I can get
some cards printed when I'm back.
[ANS thanks Gabe V31NJ/NJ7H for the
above
information]
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October
Amateur Radio Satellites Activation of Sint Maarten Announced
PJ7, ST.
MAARTEN. Members of Argentinian DXers Group will be active as PJ7T from Sint
Maarten (NA-105) between October 24th and November 4th. Operators mentioned
are Dan/LU9FHF, Bob/LU4FBU, Andy/LU2JCW, Wally/LU3FMD and Jose/LU1FM. They
plan to have three station on the HF bands and one on the Amateur Radio
Satellites. QSL via LU1FM direct, LoTW or eQSL.
Look for their Web page to
be active soon at:
http://www.tarjetasqsl.com.ar/pj7t[ANS
thanks Ohio/Penn DX Bulletin No. 1307 for the above
information]
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Nayif-1
Status Report and New Dashboard
The Nayif-1 (EO-88) CubeSat has now been
in orbit for more than two weeks and all systems continue to operate
nominally.
The power budget is positive, the spin/tumble rate is
acceptably low, on board temperatures are perfectly okay and, importantly,
the educational/amateur transponder switching is taking place
autonomously
as planned.
More than 250 stations around the world have provided
telemetry to the Nayif Data Warehouse and the FUNcube Team are extremely
grateful to them for their invaluable support.
The experts have now
formally allocated Catalog Number 42017 to Nayif-1 (EO88) and the TLEs can
now be downloaded from Celestrak – TLEs
New Dashboards
The
FUNcube Team have now updated the Dashboards for both Nayif-1 and FUNcube-1
so that they display only the telemetry received from the individual
spacecraft that they are designed for. This will help users to display only
the correct information and graphs and reduce confusion. Whilst they only
display the data from ONE spacecraft, they will, as now, receive and decode
the data from all FUNcube payloads currently in orbit and automatically
submit it to the relevant Data Warehouse.
The new Dashboard for
FUNcube-1 (ver 1044) can be downloaded from here: FUNcube Dashboard Installer
1044
The new Dashboard for Nayif-1 (ver 1040) can be downloaded
from here: Nayif-1 Dashboard Installer 1040
Additionally some command
line parameters have been added to enable the programmes to auto-start with
the desired parameters. These
are:
/minimized
/autostart
/source=dongle
or
/source=soundcard
Some
notes on how to implement these parameters can be found
here: funcube-dashboard-autostart
Nayif-1 Data Warehouse
http://data.amsat-uk.org/nayif1/Ham
radio satellite transmits Vice President’s message
https://amsat-uk.org/2017/02/25/nayif-1-uae-vice-president-message/Nayif-1
Launched
https://amsat-uk.org/2017/02/15/nayif-1-launched/[ANS
thanks AMSAT-UK for the above
information]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
ARISS
News
+ A Successful contact was made between ABOUT GAGARIN FROM
SPACE.
Raduga Space Communication Center of St. Petersburg, Russia and
Cosmonaut Sergey Ryzhikov using Callsign RSØISS. The contact began
UTC and
lasted about nine and a half minutes. Contact was Direc via
RA1AJN. ARISS
Mentor was Sergey RV3DR.
+ A Successful contact was made between Ecole
“Robespierre B.”,
Rueil-Malmaison, France and Astronaut Thomas Pesquet
KG5FYG using
Callsign FX0ISS. The contact began 2017-03-01 08:04 UTC and
lasted
about nine and a half minutes. Contact was Direct via F6KFA.
ARISS Mentor was Joseph F6ICS.
+ A Successful contact was made between
College Marcel Pagnol, Rueil-
Malmaison, France and Astronaut Thomas
Pesquet KG5FYG using Callsign
FX0ISS. The contact began 2017-03-01 08:04
UTC and lasted about
nine and a half minutes. Contact was Direct via
F6KFA.
ARISS Mentor was Joseph F6ICS.
+ A Successful contact was
made between Ecole Albert Camus, Rueil-
Malmaison, France and Astronaut
Thomas Pesquet KG5FYG using Callsign
FX0ISS. The contact began 2017-03-01
08:04 UTC and lasted about
nine and a half minutes. Contact was Direct via
F6KFA.
ARISS Mentor was Joseph F6ICS.
Upcoming ARISS Contact
Schedule
+ Blair Pointe Upper Elementary School, Peru, IN, direct via
WD9GIU
The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be NA1SS
The
scheduled astronaut is Shane Kimbrough KE5HOD
Contact is a go for: Thu
2017-03-09 15:21:33 UTC
+ 3rd Junior High School, Komotini, Greece,
direct via SV7APQ
The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be
OR4ISS
The scheduled astronaut is Shane Kimbrough KE5HOD
Contact is a
go for: Fri 2017-03-10 08:20:46 UTC
[ANS thanks ARISS, Charlie AJ9N and
David AA4KN for the
above information]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Satellite
Shorts From All Over
+ The AMSAT-NA office was closed Friday March 3 and
will remain closed through Monday March 6. Martha will return to office
Tuesday March 7.
[ANS thanks Martha 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 addi-
tional benefits. Application forms
are available from the AMSAT Office.
Primary and secondary school
students are eligible for membership at one-half the standard yearly rate.
Post-secondary school students enrolled in at least half time status shall be
eligible for the stu-
dent rate for a maximum of 6 post-secondary years in
this status. Contact Martha at the AMSAT Office for additional student
membership information.
73,
This week's ANS Editor, EMike
McCardel, AA8EM aa8em at amsat dot
org
_______________________________________________
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