SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-249.01 ECHO Update AMSAT News Service Bulletin 249.01 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. September 5, 2004 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-249.01 The Mode L/S Experimenters Wednesday was a success. Reports from a number of amateur stations indicate that good signals were copied from the S Band transmitter. The data from Echo shows that the satellite worked fine and there was enough power to sustain Echo through Eclipse. Until next Experimenters Wednesday we plan to run Echo with the FM repeater ON and the BBS OFF. During this time, command stations will work on the satellites solar panel power output. Next Experimenters Wednesday, 8 September, we plan to run a PSK31 test. The satellite will be configured to receive on 28.140 mhz (10 meters) in USB mode and transmit on 435.300 mhz in FM mode. Only PSK31 mode may be operated during this test. I personally am not setup for this mode, so I would appreciate reports of how well (or not well) this mode worked sent to the amsat-bb. You can check: http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/echo/ for the most up to date scheduling for Echo. I will post any changes to the schedule on this Web page. If the 435.150 mhz transmitter is ON then status info is sent in the PBP Broadcast message as well. [ANS thanks the Echo Command Team for the above info] /EX SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-249.02 AMSAT Symposium AMSAT News Service Bulletin 249.02 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. August 21, 2004 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-249.02 The 22nd Annual AMSAT Symposium and Annual Meeting, to be held on October 8-10, 2004, is fast approaching. The symposium committee has an outstanding venue in store for you. You have a few short days to make your reservations to the meeting at the lower prices. After September 8, the registration costs for the Symposium jumps from $35 to $40. If you haven't done this or made your reservation at the Hotel, please do so immediately. Here are some of the highlights and latest information that we have in store for you. More will be coming soon. Check the AMSAT web site often for the latest details. The web site is located at: http://www.amsat.org/ - Venue This year's meeting will be held in Arlington, Virginia. The beauty of this location is that it is directly above Crystal City, where there are hundreds of shops (including radio shack), fast food restaurants, and the Washington Metro system. Metro can take you to the many free attractions in the area. - ARISS Meeting This years symposium will be held in conjunction with the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) international delegates meeting. The ARISS meetings will be held October 10-13. You are welcome to attend any or all of the ARISS meetings. In addition, many of the ARISS team members and international delegates will be attending and presenting at the AMSAT Symposium. - Banquet Speaker We are pleased to announce that our guest speaker at the banquet will be astronaut Carl Walz. Carl has flown in space 4 times. Two of these missions were Shuttle/SAREX flights. His most recent trip to space was as an Expedition 4 crew member on the ISS. During his stay, Carl and Valery Korzun installed and deployed one of the four ARISS antennas on the ISS during an EVA spacewalk. Carl will discuss his ISS expedition as well as NASA's new Journey to the Moon, Mars & beyond. For more information on Carl Walz, see: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/walz.html - Prize Drawing The prizes are starting to roll in. To date, we have an ICOM 910H as one of the grand prizes as well as an SDR-1000/RO, Software Defined Receiver board set from FlexRadio Systems. - Sunday Afternoon Group Tour The Sunday tour will be to the new hangar facility Smithsonian Air & Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center, where you can see hundreds of aircraft and spacecraft including the Space Shuttle Enterprise, the world's fastest plane, the SR-71 Blackbird, the Concorde and hundreds of historic airplanes. For more information, see: http://www.nasm.si.edu/museum/udvarhazy/ - Symposium Papers The proceeding papers are now in printing. I am proud to say that we have over 30 papers in this year's proceedings. This is a significant boost in papers from previous years. As such, we will have some very interesting presentations at the symposium. Some of the presentations in store for you include the latest on Echo and ARISS, the plans for Eagle and P3E, as well as presentations on some of the university-built satellites. We will also have some great poster/displays. While the poster/displays are still a work in progress, we expect there to be a very interesting Cubesat display that will be set up by Cliff, K7RR. - Final Note We will have more exciting things to announce in the near future. In the meantime, please get your registration forms in ASAP so we know who will be attending. And frequently visit the symposium web page at the AMSAT web site: http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/symposium/ We look forward to seeing all of you at the Symposium this October. [ANS thanks AMSAT Symposium Committee Co-Chairs Frank Bauer, KA3HDO and Janet Bauer for the above info] /EX SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-249.03 Online AO-51 Link Budget Calculator AMSAT News Service Bulletin 249.03 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. September 5, 2004 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-249.03 A spreadsheet for calculating the link budget requirements for communication via AO-51 was recently created by AMSAT-ZL member Terry Osborne, ZL2BAC. It's available for download from the Echo Project Page on the AMSAT-NA Web site. Look for the link under the 'Questions and Answers' section which can be found at: http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/echo/ [ANS thanks the AMSAT-BB for the above info] /EX SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-249.04 Stanley L. Burghardt, W0IT Silent Key AMSAT News Service Bulletin 249.04 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. September 5, 2004 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-249.04 Stan Burghardt, W0IT (ex-W0BJV), of Watertown, South Dakota, died August 22. He was 93. He was the founder of Burghardt Radio Supply Inc (now Burghardt Amateur Center). Licensed in 1931 as W9BJV (which became W0BJV in 1946), Burghardt remained active on the air--especially on 6 meters--until his death. He also had been active in satellite work and was a member of ARRL, AMSAT and SMIRK. Burghardt started out selling ham radio parts in 1937 and in the 1950s expanded his Watertown operation into a popular Amateur Radio equipment supplier. The company has been a regular QST advertiser for the past 50 years, and many early ads featured a photo of Burghardt with his signature. Burghardt sold the business to Jim Smith, W0MJY, but he remained active in the company until January 2002. A service was held September 1. [ANS thanks the ARRLWeb for the above info] /EX SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-249.05 This Week's News in Brief AMSAT News Service Bulletin 249.05 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. September 5, 2004 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-249.05 **The Lockheed Martin A2100 communications satellite fleet has achieved a major milestone by accumulating 100 years of successful in-orbit operations. The A2100 satellite series, designed and manufactured at Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems (LMCSS), currently consists of 24 satellites featuring 900 transponders with an accumulated lifetime of over 4,000 years of successful operations in orbit. The first A2100 satellite, AMC-1, was launched Sept. 8, 1996. AMC-15, a hybrid Ku/Ka-band satellite, is scheduled for launch later this year by International Launch Services (ILS), a Lockheed Martin joint venture, aboard a Proton launch vehicle from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. --PRNewswire ** It was the starting point for dozens of commercial communications satellites, military spacecraft and pioneering space probes, including the first man-made object to journey outside our solar system. But after 42 years of Atlas rocket launches, pad 36A saw its final blastoff on August 31. Following the booster's Earth-shaking climb into orbit, launch team members hunkered down in the Complex 36 Blockhouse positioned 1,400 feet away from the pad took a moment to salute the historic site. --SpaceFlightNow ** At a time when the nation's wireless companies are increasingly desperate for more airwaves to serve a fast-growing base of 160 million customers, little-known NextWave Telecom Inc. has networks up and running in 26 markets but has never served a single paying customer. NextWave's wireless licenses are the 21st-century equivalent of undeveloped beachfront property. After winning a battle with the FCC over its airwaves that went all the way to the Supreme Court, the New York-based company is preparing to put them to use. It plans to emerge from bankruptcy protection next month, and either open for business or sell its rights to the airwaves for what many analysts believe could be about $3 billion. --Yahoo ** Iran intends to launch its first satellite into space in April 2005. The satellite, code-named Mesbah (lantern), is said to weigh 60 kilograms (132 pounds) and is cube-shaped with each side measuring 50 centimetres (20 inches). It's planned to be put into orbit at an altitude of 900 kilometres (about 560 miles). "The satellite will be used to identify natural resources, control the electrical and energy network (gas and oil), and later on can be used by communications and crisis management," press reports said. --SpaceDaily /EX