Satgen281 Satellite Watching by GM4IHJ 13 Aug 94 BID of this msg is SGEN281 Please use this BID if you retransmit the msg Recent satgens about RS10, RS12 and Dove have aroused more response than has occured for a long time . So IHJ hereby promises to keep publishing plenty of data on these birds, and notes the " anti digital " feeling of most satellite users . It is appreciated that there has been a flood of digital electronic doorstops in space recently, which seem to have nothing to do with amateur radio , and it is to be hoped that satellite builders will in future note the desire of most users to have sats which allow them to expand their HF and VHF/UHF analog activities, rather than a plague of digital do nothings. But please do not throw out the baby with the bathwater. The Uosat 9600 birds are doing a superb job maintaining the backbone of the world wide packet information and bulletin net, even if the rest of the byte brigade seem to have almost zero percent users or useful purpose. That said lets see if I can answer another of your regular queries. Yes IHJ does enjoy chasing old sats. The big visual targets represented by some of these old monsters are still around . So here as requested are the details of 4 of them :- SEASAT 1 1978 64A 10967 a very big extinct radar sat in a curious 108 deg inclination orbit at a height of 770 kms , increment westwards about 16 degrees = 64 minutes later each successive day. COSMOS 1220 1980 89A 12054 a big Ocean recon sat in a slightly eccentric 64.5 deg inclination orbit at 640 kms mean altitude (yes Ocean recon do not orbit this high. But this one was boosted to this height , then used in what looked like an unsuccessful killer sat target role ). COSMOS 1939 1988 32B This is the rocket body not the sat. Its mean height is 662 kms in a 99 deg inclination orbit. UPPER ATMOSPHERE RESEARCH SAT 1991 63B in a 57 deg inclination orbit at a mean altitude of about 577 kms. COSMOS 1220 is a good evening target up to a couple of hours after sunset in August 94 , and SEASAT is a good target in late September 94 evening skies. You can get up to date Keplerian elements from NASA by quoting the NORAD designation or the Sat Ident No. If you do not wish to be particular , residents of Northern hemisphere sites can see members of the Navsat (Transit + CosNav), WEfax ( Meteor and NOAA ) , and the ERS1 and Landsat Earth Resources satellites in near polar orbits simply by looking eastwards or westwards at an elevation of about 30 degrees , one or two of these sats goes by at least every ten minutes and is naked eye visual as well as sending traffic on 149 MHz approx or 136/137 MHz. As a personal experiment this winter IHJ will be looking for visual sightings of Oscar 10 and Oscar 13. Software modelling to see when they are sunlit over a darkened earth suggests plenty of opportunities in the next few months. Oscar 13 having a lower perigee height should be easiest , but neither sat will be easy near apogee even if bright enough to be visible because they do not move fast enough near apogee to be picked out from amongst the stars. Software modelling says both should be visible and moving at or near perigee but it will probably take a few attempts before successful observation can be confirmed. 73 de GM4IHJ @ GB7SAN