SB NEWS @ AMSAT $SPC0722
* SpaceNews 22-Jul-96 *


BID: $SPC0722


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			       SpaceNews
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                          MONDAY JULY 22, 1996


SpaceNews originates at KD2BD in Wall Township, New Jersey, USA.  It
is published every week and is made available for non-commercial use.



* SAFEX NEWS *
==============
On 12-Jul-96, the SAFEX II equipment onboard MIR's PRIRODA module was
powered on.  The digital speech recorder was tested and found to work
well.  Pre-recorded messages were copied by many groundstations on a
frequency of 437.925 MHz.

Joerg, DL3LUM of the SAFEX Team reported that the SAFEX repeater on the Mir
space station was operational on 19-Jul-97.  Joerg also reported a short
contact was achieved by Matt KC5BTL under W5RRR with one of the Yuri's
onboard Mir.  The first two-way ground to ground QSO was performed between
DF0VR, IV3WLQ, and LY3BH.  Dave, N6JLH performed the first two-way ground
to ground QSO on the American continent with WA6LIE.

The attitude of MIR is very bad at the present time, so working via SAFEX
is more or less difficult.  There is hope for better results in the next
couple of days.

The CTCSS tones required to communicate through the SAFEX experiment on Mir
will not be published until further testing is complete.  CTCSS is used to
avoid interference onboard Mir.

The SAFEX team is very interested in SAFEX reception reports.  Please send
your comments to Joerg at: DL3LUM@DB0AAB.#BAY.DEU.EU on packet, or:
joerg.hahn@dlr.de on the Internet.

[Info via Joerg, DL3LUM and Thomas, DL2MDE]


* CAMERON TO LEAVE ASTRONAUT CORPS *
====================================
Shuttle astronaut Ken Cameron (Colonel, USMC) (KB5AWP) will leave NASA
on 05-Aug-97 to pursue other career interests.  Cameron, selected as an
astronaut in 1984 and a three-time Shuttle flight veteran, will join Hughes
Training, Inc., as Executive Director, Houston Operations.

"Ken's contributions to the astronaut office and to NASA have been valuable,"
said David C. Leestma, director of Flight Crew Operations.  "He was
instrumental in setting up the support system for NASA astronauts training
in Russia.  We wish him well in his new career."

Cameron first flew as pilot on STS-37 in 1991 and served as commander on two
subsequent missions, STS-56 in 1993 and STS-74 in 1995.

Additional biographical information on Cameron and other astronauts can be
found on the NASA Internet astronaut biography home page at URL:

	http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/


[Info via NASA]


* DJ4ZC RECEIVES AWARD *
========================
The prestigious Horkheimer Prize has been awarded this year to AMSAT-DL
President Dr. Karl Meinzer, DJ4ZC, at the Ham Radio convention at
Friedrichshafen, Germany.  The prize is awarded to members of an IARU
Amateur Radio society by the Deutscher Amateur Radio Club (DARC) for
"merits of amateur radio, its further development and the targets of
DARC".  It is named after Rudolf Horkheimer, one of the first Radio
Amateurs in Germany. 

Dr. Karl Meinzer, DJ4ZC, has been honored for his outstanding achievement
in the technical fields of the Amateur Radio Service for decades.

[Info via Norbert, DF5DP (DARC Satellite Coordinator)]


* LINUX SOFTWARE *
==================
Klaus Kudielka, OE1KIB, has created two small Phase 3D telemetry decoding
programs for the Linux operating system.

phase3 ... Reads the 512+2-byte blocks from the G3RUH modem, performs
           a CRC check, and writes the blocks (without CRC) to stdout.
           
phase3c .. Reads the binary blocks from stdin and writes them to stdout
	   in a human-readable format.

Eventually there will be a "phase3d" program similar to "phase3c".

You can download the development tree (including ELF binaries and Makefile)
from: http://asterix.nt.tuwien.ac.at/~oe1kib/Satellite.html.

[Info via Klaus Kudielka, OE1KIB]


* FEEDBACK/INPUT WELCOMED *
===========================
Comments and input for SpaceNews should be directed to the editor (John,
KD2BD) via any of the paths listed below:
 
WWW       : http://www.njin.net/~magliaco/
PACKET    : KD2BD @ KS4HR.NJ.USA.NA
INTERNET  : kd2bd@amsat.org, magliaco@email.njin.net
SATELLITE : AMSAT-OSCAR-16, LUSAT-OSCAR-19


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/EX