Satgen 179   Apology, Kitsat , STS47, Mars   by GM4IHJ     30th August 92

Apologies to anyone misled by a corrupt version of Satgen176 which started
in USA. It has several lines missing and managed to confuse several
statements about sat frequencies. Please note Kitsat down is 435.17 MHz
and RM1 is 435.016 up and 145.987 down. Have tried to stop Americans
removing BIDs on messages from Europe and inserting their own BID and bull
title because someone always sends this duplicate rubbish back to Europe
where it has circulated uncorrupted several weeks earlier. European Sysops
please note ANY SATGEN BULLETIN ORIGINATING IN USA SHOULD BE DESTROYED,
otherwise we get duplication and triplication or worse , total corruption.

Kitsat is working fine despite poor Keplers obviously following wrong
bird. I am getting used to its slower progress across my sky than Uo22 and
the less extensive doppler. Reception on 435/27 converter to UK FM CB
receiver works fine. Please note you change your PBG file PG.CFG at line 2
to HL01-11 and, line 3 to HL01-12 or software reports reading wrong sat.

Reading first NASA reports about failed Tethered sat trial in STS Atlantis
suggests there is no chance of a repeat test in under a year. So second
trial involving Amateur Radio SEDSAT is now like to suffer long delay.

Shuttle STS 47 launches 1549 ut 11 September to 57 degree inclination
orbit which should bring it over Glasgow about 20 minutes after launch.
This flight has an Amateur Radio SAREX input. So we may get 4 or 5 days of
possible Shuttle VHF 5 times a day over UK between 1300 ut and about 1900
ut

Uncomfirmed reports suggest Delta 6925 has successfully launched the
latest geotail experiment. This follows a highly elliptical orbit from
Earth out to distance of Moon, reporting plasma levels in the tail of the
Earth's magnetic field.

Though Amsat's proposed Mars probe originally suggested as going with
Phase 3D, has been cancelled, there is plenty of Mars activity coming
shortly. JPLs Mars Observer should launch 16th September 92, aiming to
arrive and insert into Mars orbit in September 93. Mars orbit to be near
circular 378 km altitude, sun synchronous. Telemetry is X band 8417.71605
Engineering , 8423.148147 Image , sub carriers 320 kHz and 21.333 kHz
respectively. All signals right hand circular polarisation. Reed Solomon
Fox encoding will be used and some quite low signal data rates are planned
at times . So while high speed data will utilize NASA 26m and bigger
dishes. Narrow band reception of slow data rates may be possible at times
on much smaller dishes. Mars sat Tx power 44 watts to a 1.5m dish.
73 de GM4IHJ @ GB7SAN
PLEASE DO NOT RETRANSMIT THIS BULLETIN UNDER DIFFERENT BID OR SUBJECT