Satgen91    Shuttle Flight Schedule  24 th Dec 90

NASA have published their 1991 program, and a little bit of maths applied
to their figures shows that three shuttle flights should come in range of
UK. It is not clear whether Amateur radio will be involved in any of them
, but here for those who like being prepared , is the provisional
schedule.

Date91  No.  Name      Purpose    Inc   Altnm    Footprint   Remarks
26 Feb  39  Discovery  D of Def   57    140 nm    15.9   Overhead Glasgow
April   37  Atlantis   Gamma Ray  28.5  243       20.8   Not quite Jersey
May     40  Columbia ESA SpaceLab 39    150       16.5   Visible G not GM
July    43  Discovery  TDRS 4     28.5  160       16.7   Southern France
Aug     44  Atlantis   D of Def   28.5  195       18.7   Middle France
Nov     48  Discovery Upper Atmos 57    292       22.6   Overhead Glasgow
Dec     42  Atlantis  Micro Grav  28.5  167       17.4   Middle France

Note  STS 39 and 48 will see all of UK for roughly 6 consecutive orbits.
      STS 40 will briefly see England and Wales
      Altitude is given by NASA in Nautical miles not ordinary miles
      Some Europeans may hear Space walk EVA UHF radio on STS 37 (not UK)
      Most if not all shuttle radio near UK will be microwave to and from 
      TDRS tactical data relay geosats on tight spot beams.

Have been getting some interesting  'meteor scatter ' ? signals from
Uosat3. Never more than 3 packets at a time , occuring roughly ten minutes
before Uosat3 actually came above my horizon. I saw the first lot in
November because I always leave the Uosat downlink on frequency ready to
run in on tune ,on the next pass , every time I finish a previous pass.
Have now seen this sub horizon propagation twice. The merit of Uosat3 is
that it clearly identifies itself ( unlike other sats caught by meteor
scatter). But I really am surprised to find that I can get this effect on
435MHz . I am assuming the wideband reception of Uosat takes care of any
doppler present. I have no records of this sort of thing occuring on the
narrow band BPSK of the Pacsats. 73 de John GM4IHJ @ GB7SAN
+

Will add more satgen news to this later JB