Satgen90 Cosmonaut QSO's, AREM, Mir Microwave, RS10, RM1   17 Dec 90

Now that U2MIR is back in Mir, he has been very active on 2m FM 145.5 and
145.55. Mir is presently passing UK west to east 6 orbits spaced 96 mins
apart between 0600ut and 1400ut. Hear Mir one day, hear it next day 37
minutes later.
Mir's downlink on 143.625 to the FCC was very disturbed during the recent
visit of the Japanese reporter. He was heard via Mir VHF rebroadcast
establishing microwave links for his traffic to Tokyo. Lots of English
voices shouting "Standby " then off he went in Japanese. The Soyuz capsule
taking him to and from Mir was heard in UK on 121.75, 166.14 and also
922.755 MHz.
Mir's FCC link VHF seems to have been superceded by a microwave link
through a Luch geostationary relay . Traffic on VHF was minimal or none
existent for 2 or 3 days recently with indirectly modulated VHF being
heard as Mir came from Canada and crossed the UK western horizon.
AREM Amateur Radio Experiment in Mir. This experiment  ( quite separate
from Musa Manarov's 145.5/145.55 QSO's ) is now expected to start in
February when an Austrian cosmonaut is due to visit Mir. Initial a beacon
on 145.805MHz will carry 1 minute of synthesised voice followed by 2
minutes of 1200bps FSK AX.25 packet ( same as Dove ). Followed by a 1 or 2
minute break. After Nov 91 it is anticipated that the break in the
schedule will be available for 2 minutes of QSOs using the same frequency
( although uplink frequency for reply is not presently known ).

RS10 has been suffering break through on its 2m Rx from , its colocated
149.9 Navsat Tx, now that the navsat portion has been activated. This sat
was placed in orbit as a navsat operational inactive spare. Now it has
been activated it is likely that the next spare navsat presently carrying
RS12 and held on the ground, will be launched as an in orbit spare
allowing RS12 to be activated.

RM1 is due to launch from Plesetsk into an 83deg 1000kms near polar orbit
on 7th Jan 91. If all goes well we will then have an excellent low earth
orbit Oscar 7 replacement giving twice daily short QSO's as far west as
Georgia, Missouri, Minnesota and Alberta ie almost all eastern USA and
most of Canada. This facility should be accessible with 8 to 10 watts of
435 up. I used a 48 element Jaybeam multibeam for uplink to Oscar 7 from a
microwave mod transverter. For down link I had a 5 XY yagi with pre amp
and polarisation switching. all mounted on an azimuth rotator ( no
elevation ) on the bungalow chimney. This was very good , because of
course all the DX on this type of bird occurs at long range and low
elevation , near the horizon.. Another advantage of this kind of operating
is that azimuth tracking is slow and doppler is relatively easy to follow
on these orbits near the horizom, where because of the short path to the
leo sat you still get good signals. 73 de John GM4IHJ @ GB7SAN