SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-165.07 ECHO arrives in Baikonur AMSAT News Service Bulletin 165.07 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. June 13, 2004 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-165.07 Chuck Green, N0ADI, who is travelling with ECHO to do the final testing and integration at the launch site, reports that they both arrived safely at the hotel on Saturday, 12 June 2004. Since 12 June is the Russian Independence Day holiday, further work on ECHO had to wait until the following day. On 13 June 2004 Chuck reports, "This is our first day working on ECHO to get it ready for launch. It is about 40 km to the integration facility. The bus took almost 1.5 hours to get there today. We went slow today because we were carrying lots of satellites. Each day we will go to the integration facility and return to the hotel on the bus so we must manage our work to match the bus schedule. We leave the hotel at 8am and return at the hotel about 7pm. Most days the trip will take about one hour each way" Once the team arrived at the launch site they were then given a safety briefing. During the briefing the shipping containers were cleaned and placed in the clean room. With the team was dressed in clean room garb and in the clean room, ECHO was taken out of it's shipping case and set it up on our table. The bottom antennas were installed along with the bottom solar panel, magnet, and corner reflectors. Chuck said, "Then we turned ECHO on and successfully communicated with it over the umbilical from my computer." He continued, "We then went through most of the test procedure and everything looks good so far." The four two meter receivers and the two 70 cm transmitters were successfully tested. Tomorrow, 14 June 2004, there will be additional testing of the SQRX. [ANS thanks Chuck N0ADI for the above information] /EX