re: [sarex] Sat Tracking By Pencil

[Will Marchant <willmarchant@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi James:
There were several articles on this topic published in the Scientific
American's "The Amateur Scientist" column during the late fifties and
sixties.  Fortunately, those have all become available on a CD-ROM
collection.  One URL is
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/097034760X/qid=995889333/sr=2-2/ref=aps_sr_b_1_2/t/102-2995955-1374567

Martin Davidoff's "The Radio Amateur's Satellite Handbook" has plans for
the OSCARLOCATOR and a couple of nice chapters on orbital mechanics.
This book is available from AMSAT and the ARRL.

I also recommend Jerry John Seller's book Understanding Space as a good
introduction to orbital mechanics.  A URL is
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0072424680/qid=995889807/sr=1-1/ref=sc_b_1/t/102-2995955-1374567

I think this sounds like a great classroom project.  You can make the
predictions and then go outside and look for visual passes to check your
results.  Lots of fun!

--
Will Marchant
marchant@ssl.berkeley.edu       http://chips.ssl.berkeley.edu/~marchant/

kc6rol@amsat.org                http://home.earthlink.net/~willmarchant/



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