AMSAT News

AMSAT-NA Event Reminders

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A few reminders regarding upcoming AMSAT-NA Events:

1. Ballots for the Board of Directors election are due at the AMSAT-NA office in one week (September 15, 2016). Please mail your ballots in today. Ballots that arrive after the close of business on September 15th will not be counted.

2. The 2016 AMSAT-NA Space Symposium and General Meeting will be held aboard the Carnival Liberty November 10th – November 14th. If you have not yet booked your cruise and plan on attending, please do so as soon as possible. See here for further information:

http://www.amsat.org/wordpress/?page_id=3667

3. If you have already booked your cruise, please remember to register for the Symposium. You can register via the AMSAT online store here:

http://store.amsat.org/catalog/index.php?cPath=39

4. If you plan to attend the Symposium and wish to bring radios to operate, please remember that the Carnival Liberty is registered in Panama. US licensed amateur operators wishing to operate at sea must obtain an IARP from the ARRL. Details are available at the following site:

http://www.arrl.org/iarp

Unfortunately, obtaining a license for operation in Mexico or within Mexican territorial waters is likely not possible at this time.

5. If you wish to contribute a paper to the Symposium Proceedings and/or present at the Symposium, please email Dan Schultz (n8fgv at amsat.org) with a proposed title as soon as possible, preferably by September 15th. Final papers must be submitted by October 15th for publication in the printed Proceedings.

AMSAT-NA Board of Directors Ballots Due by September 15th

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Ballots have been mailed to AMSAT-NA members in good standing, and must be returned to the AMSAT-NA office by September 15, 2016 in order to be counted. Those sent outside North America were sent by air mail. If you have not received your ballot package in a reasonable time for your QTH, please contact the AMSAT-NA office. Your completed ballot should be sent as promptly as possible, and those from outside North American preferably by air mail or other expedited means.

This year there are five candidates:

Tom Clark, K3IO
Clayton Coleman, W5PFG
Mark Hammond, N8MH
Bruce Paige, KK5DO
Paul Stoetzer, N8HM

The three candidates receiving the highest number of votes will be seated as voting Board Members with two year terms. The two candidates receiving the next highest number of votes will be non-voting Alternate Board Members with terms of one year. Please vote for no more than three candidates.

Please take the time to review the candidate statements that accompany the ballot and determine who you wish to see on the Board. Election of Board members is both an obligation as well as an opportunity by our membership to help shape the future direction of AMSAT-NA.

RadFxSat-2 (Fox-1E) Launch Scheduled for December 2017

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AMSAT has been informed that the launch for the NASA Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) XX mission carrying RadFxSat-2 (Fox-1E) has been scheduled for December 2017.

In addition to RadFxSat-2, the ELaNa XX mission will carry 12 CubeSats constructed both by NASA and several universities around the United States. The mission will be launched by Virgin Galactic on their LauncherOne air launch to orbit system from Mojave, CA

RadFxSat-2, like RadFxSat (Fox-1B), is a partnership opportunity between the Vanderbilt University Institute for Space and Defense Electronics and AMSAT and will carry a similar radiation effects experiment, studying new FinFET technology.

RadFxSat-2 will be the fifth Fox-1 satellite built by AMSAT. Fox-1A, now AMSAT-OSCAR 85 (AO-85), was launched on October 8, 2015 and is fully operational, providing science data from it’s onboard experiments and FM transponder service for the amateur radio community. Fox-1Cliff and Fox-1D are scheduled for launch this fall and RadFxSat is scheduled to launch in early 2017.

The RadFxSat-2 spacecraft bus will be built on the Fox-1 series but will feature a linear transponder “upgrade” to replace the standard FM transponder in Fox-1A through D. In addition, the uplink and downlink bands will be reversed from the previous Fox satellites in a Mode V/u (J) configuration using a 2 meter uplink and 70 cm downlink. The downlink will feature a 1200 bps BPSK telemetry channel to carry the Vanderbilt science data in addition to a 30 kHz wide transponder for amateur radio use.

RadFxSat-2 Logo

RadFxSat “Tour” on YouTube

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Vice President Engineering Jerry Buxton, N0JY, gave a live “tour” of the RadFxSat CubeSat on August 20 from Fox Labs, describing various aspects of the flight model, construction, and testing.

The video playback is available on YouTube.