SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-028.01 STS-72 AND SPRE HR AMSAT NEWS SERVICE BULLETIN 028.01 FROM AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD January 28, 1996 TO ALL RADIO AMATEURS BT BID: $ANS-028.01 Space Shuttle mission STS-72 ended on Saturday with a successful pre-dawn landing at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. WB4APR lists the following callsigns that he has been able to determine that successfully digipeated a packet via SPRE. He asks that anyone knowing of other stations not previously reported that they know were digipeated via W3EAX to send him the appropriate packet. He asks that no more log files be sent unless they contain call he has not previously been sent. Bob says that the only non USA logs received were from Japan, Taiwan, South Africa and Honduras. ANS thanks Bob Bruninga WB4APR for this information. AD4OR, BV1AF, JR5CLV, K1HJC, K3CEW, KA1VRF, KA3DBK, KB0NRK, KB5SDW, KC4NHB, KC5EJK, KC5FEV, KC5HHN, KC5KGE, KC7GNM, KD4DS, KD4RSX, KD4SEV, KD4UYR, KE4EER, KE4KQB, KE4LQF, KE4QIZ, KE4QIZ, KE4QJH, KE4YGT, KF4BVD, KK2L, KO4HD, KT4FI, N2BRG, N2MSM, N2NRD, N2SNQ, N3EZD, N3JLQ, N3OBQ, N4ZQ, N5ITU, N5XDN, N8AAQ, N9AB, W0QDP, W0RAO, W3ADO, W3EAX, WA3RWP, WA4VAF, WA5SLG, WA6RTX, WA7ZZB, WB4APR, WB5QLD, WB6LLO, WD5DZC, WH6YHC, WS5R, XE1KK, XE2MXU, ZS6BMN, ZS6HQ, /EX SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-028.02 STS-75 ORBITAL DATA AVAILABLE HR AMSAT NEWS SERVICE BULLETIN 028.02 FROM AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD January 28, 1996 TO ALL RADIO AMATEURS BT BID: $ANS-028.02 The next scheduled Space Shuttle mission is STS-75. Launch is planned for 22-FEB-96 / 20:18 UTC. The STS-75 Nominal Mission Orbit Profile and State Vectors have been uploaded to the AMSAT FTP site: ftp.amsat.org /amsat/keps/sts-75v.zip This data is available for immediate download. The AMSAT WWW State Vector Tutorial page will be updated soon to link this and thus make it available for download via the World-Wide Web. ANS thanks Ken Ernandes N2WWD for this information. /EX SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-028.03 TWO NOTABLE SATELLITE NOTABLES ARE SILENT KEYS HR AMSAT NEWS SERVICE BULLETIN 028.03 FROM AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD January 28, 1996 TO ALL RADIO AMATEURS BT BID: $ANS-028.03 It has been reported that James B. Caton, W1WXZ of Cape Cod, Massachusetts died January 18th of a massive heart attack while he was at home. Jim was 76 years old. He was very active on the satellites, and his callsign was frequently seen in the Pacsat queues. Jim worked over 170 countries on the OSCAR satellites -- quite an achievement. He will be missed by his many friends. ANS is indebted to Chuck W9ODI this sad news. The second silent key, Nick Marshall W6OLO, was a pioneer in the amateur satellite world. He was one of the founders of Project OSCAR 35 years ago and was serving as its President when he died earlier this week. Services were in Sebastapol, California on Sunday morning January 28th. Nick was 81. AMSAT President Bill Tynan W3XO said that he had known Nick Marshall for almost 30 years and that he had been an inspiration to the early AMSAT enthusiasts during the early days of that organization's existence. Bill added that, if Nick's dream of an amateur transponder on the Moon can ever be realized, it should carry the call W6OLO. ANS thanks Cliff Buttschardt W6HDO for this sad news. /EX SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-028.04 SATELLITE STATUS HR AMSAT NEWS SERVICE BULLETIN 028.03 FROM AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD January 28, 1996 TO ALL RADIO AMATEURS BT BID: $ANS-028.04 OSCAR-10 John Magliacane, KB2BD of Space News comments that AMSAT-OSCAR-10's orientation is now such that its solar panels are not receiving adequate illumination to maintain a charge on its storage batteries. As a result, the downlink recently experienced frequency instability, and has now gone silent. Users should refrain from using AO-10 until sun angles improve to the point where its storage batteries can one again be charged. WEBERSAT The Chaminade College Prep. School students found Webersat to be operating nominally today, January 22nd, its sixth birthday. It was sending a picture of the Sudan. ANS thanks Dave Reeves KF6PJ for this information. Additional WEBERSAT news was received from John Magliacane, KB2BD of Space News According to that weekly summary of satellite happening, WO-18 is currently sending telemetry, photos, weekly whole orbit data (WOD), and light spectra of the Sun or Earth on Mondays. The satellite's digipeater is on and can be accessed on an uplink frequency of 145.900 MHz. Using a terminal program connected to your TNC/PSK modem, try connecting to yourself or calling CQ "VIA WEBER-1". Repeated packets will appear on the downlink between telemetry and CCD image data transmissions. Photo 10/14 of Ethiopia is the current image. It has great contrast with very few clouds and land features clearly visible. Use WW1.3 to convert the photo to a GIF image, then use your favorite graphics program to size it, and adjust the contrast and brightness slightly. The satellite continues to have a weak and relatively steady tone of about 1200 Hz in the downlink signal, which can cause reception problems with some modems. If this problem occurs, a ground-based solution is to adjust the IF-shift of the receiver to suppress the carrier into the skirts of the IF filter. Night reception seems to be better than in the daytime. WOD collection and broadcast will adhere to the following schedule: 13 January/Week4: Temperatures and impact detector, Ch# 14 2F 30 35 3B 40 20 January/Week1: Array currents, Ch# 26 27 28 29 2A 2B 27 January/Week2: User requested channels, Ch# ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? 3 February/Week3: BCR, 21 22 29 2F 33 36 10 February/Week4: Temperatures and impact detector, Ch# 14 2F 30 35 3B 40 17 February/Week1: Array currents, Ch# 26 27 28 29 2A 2B This information came from IK3WVJ. UO-11 UoSAT-OSCAR-11 continues to function well. It may be copied transmitting AFSK data on a narrowband FM carrier frequency of 145.826 MHz. OSCAR-11 transmits binary and ASCII data at a rate of 1200 bits per second. Surplus Bell-202 modems can be used to demodulate OSCAR-11 data provided the demodulated data stream is inverted prior to its application to the computer's serial port. ANS thanks IK3WVJ for this information. /EX