SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-263.01 AMSAT BOD Election Results AMSAT News Service Bulletin 263.01 >From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. September 18, 2004 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-263.01 As a result of the 2004 AMSAT Board of Directors elections, W3IWI, W5DID and N6TX will serve on the Board for two years. The first alternate is KK5DO and the second alternate is W4EPI. The results of the voting are: Tom Clark, W3IWI - 769 Lou McFadin, W5DID - 628 Paul Shuch, N6TX - 465 Bruce Paige, KK5DO- 450 Steve Diggs, W4EPI - 313 Lee McLamb, KU4OS - 268 Other AMSAT-NA Board members include President Robin Haighton, VE3FRH; Executive Vice President Rick Hambly, W2GPS, Gunther Meisse, W8GSM, and Barry Baines, WD4ASW. [ANS thanks Martha Saragovitz - AMSAT Manager for the above information] /EX SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-263.02 Anonymous donor issues challenge AMSAT News Service Bulletin 263.02 >From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. September 18, 2004 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-263.02 An anonymous donor has challenged Echo users and supporters. He will match dollar for dollar all donations received from now until the end of the 2004 AMSAT Space Symposium when we will retire the Echo thermometer. This is an opportunity we can't afford to lose. Show your support and contribute now! [ANS thanks Martha Saragovitz - AMSAT Manager for the above information] /EX SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-263.03 ISS Update AMSAT News Service Bulletin 263.03 >From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. September 18, 2004 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-263.03 1. Kingston School Contact Successful On Friday, September 10, at 0752 UTC, Kingston Community School in Kingston SE, South Australia experienced a successful contact with Mike Fincke, KE5AIT, via the telebridge station, NN1SS in Greenbelt, Maryland, with Dave Taylor, W8AAS, at the controls. Students were able to ask and have answered fifteen questions while an audience of 150 parents and other guests as well as many students looked on. The event was covered by WIN TV and 5TCB Community Radio as well as the local press. ABC radio spoke with ARISS Australia team member, Tony Hutchison, VK5ZAI, on Thursday, ran his interview the evening before the contact, and followed up by carrying the contact live, state wide on Friday. 2. Upcoming School Contacts Aoyama Gakuin Elementary School in Tokyo, Japan has been scheduled for a contact with the ISS. It will take place on Friday, September 17, at 07:38 UTC. The Investigator Science and Technology Centre in Adelaide, Australia has also been scheduled for an ARISS contact. It will take place via the telebridge station, WH6PN, in Hawaii on Thursday, September 23, at 0913 UTC. 3. Astronaut Speaks to all 7 Continents On Saturday, September 11, at 1504 UTC, Mike Fincke, KE5AIT, made contact with Chuck Kimball, N0NHJ, at the Palmer Research Station in Antarctica, KC4AAC, making Fincke the first crewmember on the ISS to work all 7 continents. He joins astronauts Dave Leestma and Kathy Sullivan, who also worked the 7 continents from space on STS-45. 4. Fincke Makes Request for Repeater Mode Astronaut Mike Fincke asked for and received permission to return the Kenwood to repeater mode on Saturday, September 11. Fincke had been heard on the radio last weekend (September 5) over North America, and after switching modes, he had hams buzzing again as he was heard over Europe. The radio will remain in crossband repeater mode (437.80 up, 145.80 down with no tone) until the next school contact, scheduled for Japan on Friday, September 17 at 0738 UTC. The radio will return to packet mode after the contact. 5. Mike Fincke to Participate in Upcoming Event "The Long Night of the Stars," is an open house at the control center of ESA ESOC in Darmstadt, Germany, which will be held on Saturday, September 18. Fincke has been scheduled for a contact with the control center during the event at 1854 UTC. Mike has also expressed interest in participating in a contact during the Marina Air Fair, which will be held in Marina, California on Saturday, October 16. His participation in these events will be handled as informal dialog, similar to that of Field Day. 6. Expedition 10 Training at Energia On September 6 -8, RSC Energia held training sessions for Expedition 10 crew members Leroy Chiao and Salizhan Sharipov and the backup crew, Valery Takarev and Willliam McArthur. Cosmonaut Yury Shargin, who will be the visiting crew member on the next Soyuz flight, also attended the sessions. Shargin will be involved in photography and videography, and plans to make a few ARISS contacts while on board the ISS. For more information and photos of the sessions, see: http://www.energia.ru/english/energia/iss/iss10/photo_09-09.html /EX SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-263.04 Card Checking at Symposium AMSAT News Service Bulletin 263.04 >From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. September 18, 2004 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-263.04 Bruce Paige, KK5DO says that those that need to get cards checked for W.A.S. or VUCC, may do so during the upcoming symposium. He asks that you have your application filled out correctly ahead of time. Your list for VUCC should be computer generated with Grid Square followed in the next column by the Callsign. No other information is needed for VUCC on your work sheet. For W.A.S., a computer list sorted by states followed by the Callsign is all you need. For additional questions please contact KK5DO via email. [ANS thanks Bruce Paige, KK5DO and the AMSAT-BB for this information] /EX SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-263.05 This Week's News in Brief AMSAT News Service Bulletin 263.05 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. September 18, 2004 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-263.05 ** On Saturday, September 11, astronaut Mike Fincke, KE5AIT, became the first International Space Station crew member to contact all seven of the world's continents via Amateur Radio. Fincke worked KC4AAC at Antarctica's Palmer Research Station for his last contact-- a bonus continent not required to earn the International Amateur Radio Union's Worked All Continents award. -ARRLWeb ** Web metrics suggest that the software giant's Internet Explorer has been losing a significant number of users in the past nine months to open-source browser Mozilla and its offspring, Firefox. The gains for the two browsers, which are both produced by the Mozilla Foundation, are most noticeable at Web sites popular among geek-chic early adopters. W3Schools.com, a Web development tutorial site, found that 18 percent of its visitors in September used Mozilla-based browsers, compared with 8 percent in January. Internet Explorer use dropped to 75 percent from 84 percent in the same period. --CNET ** When the Ariane 5 ECA qualification flight lifts off in October, one of the 'passengers' will be 33.5 litres of water. Onboard will be the experimental Sloshsat-FLEVO satellite, designed to help European scientists find out more about the movement of water in microgravity and its effects on satellites. Sloshsat-FLEVO is aptly named: slosh for the movement of water, sat for satellite and FLEVO, the project's acronym: Facility for Liquid Experimentation and Verification in Orbit. Flevo is also the name of the latest province in the Netherlands to be reclaimed from the sea, and one of the sites of the Dutch National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR), the main contractor for this project. The cube-shaped Sloshsat-FLEVO is a mini satellite with a mass of just 129 kg. It will be launched on top of the cylinder- shaped Maqsat-B2 structure and placed in the lower passenger position under the Ariane 5 fairing. --ESA /EX