AMSAT NEWS SERVICE
ANS-238

ANS is a free, weekly, news and information service of AMSAT North
America, The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation. ANS reports on the
activities of a worldwide group of Amateur Radio operators who share an
active interest in designing, building, launching and communicating
through analog and digital Amateur Radio satellites.

Please send any amateur satellite news or reports to:


******************* AMSAT 2007 Space Symposium *************************

The Wireless Association of South Hills Amateur Radio Club announces the
2007 AMSAT Space Symposium will be held at the Pittsburgh Airport
Marriott Hotel on Friday, October 26 through Sunday, October 28, 2007.
The AMSAT web team has posted informational pages on the AMSAT web site.
You can find the announcement with many links at:
http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/symposium/2007/index.php

************************************************** ***********************
*

In this edition:

* Special Satellite Operating Event on ANDE for August 28 + 30
* G0SFJ Satellite Mini-DXpedition to LZ and YO
* Digital Communications Conference September 28-30
* Satellite Shorts From All Over
* ARISS Status Report For The Week of August 20, 2007

SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-238.01
Special Satellite Operating Event on ANDE for August 28 + 30

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 238.01
From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
August 26, 2007
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-238.01

The US Naval Academy Satellite Laboratory announced a special ANDE
Operations Event for the Tuesday, August 28 and Thursday, August 30
morning passes over the US East Coast.

Bob, WB4APR described the operation plans, "On Tuesday, Naval Academy
stuents will operate ANDE to gather statistics on the success rate
of the APRS mission. We invite participation, attended or unattended
and request these guidelines be followed:
1) Tracking Base stations transmit at 5 minute intervals
2) 50W mobiles transmit at 3 minute intervals
3) 5W HT's transmit at 1 minute intervals

Bob reminds amateurs, "Please do not transmit more often, as it will
mess up the statistics. It would be helpful if you put your station
info in your posit text so we could confirm the validity of the sta-
tistics of your transmit rate". We recommend something like:
"Base=5min +10 dB"
"50W =3min w 5/8ths"
"HT=1min w 19" ant"

On Thursday, the Naval Academy may activate the packet to voice
synthesizer.

ANDE operates on 145.825 MHz simplex and responds to packets that
are addressed VIA APRSAT or VIA ARISS. For more information please
See http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/ande-ops.html

[ANS thanks the US Naval Academy Satellite Laboratory for the above
information]

/EX


SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-238.02
G0SFJ Satellite Mini-DXpedition to LZ and YO

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 238.02
From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
August 26, 2007
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-238.02

Andy, G0SFJ operated on the FM satellites with an Arrow Antenna and a
FT51-R from Bulgaria (LZ) on August 12-13 and from Romania (YO) on
August 18.

From Belite Brezi, Bulgaria Andy reported working these stations via
AO51: G7HIA, 9H1FF, F6CDZ, G0VHS, PD1DRE, SW1IXP, OZ1MY, and DG9YIB.

From Bucharest, Romania Andy worked IW0DTK while operating portable
in Herastrau Park. Later that evening he worked ON5SA while operat-
ing in a sunflower field.

Photos of Andy's portable satellite operations can be seen at:
http://andythomasmail.googlepages.co...tablewitharrow

[ANS thanks Andy, G0SFJ for the above information]

/EX


SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-238.03
Digital Communications Conference September 28-30

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 238.03
From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
August 26, 2007
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-238.03

The 26th Annual ARRL/TAPR Digital Communications Conference to be held
on
September 28-30, 2007 in Hartford, CT will feature topics of interest to
amateur satellite operators. AMSAT Director and VP Engineering, Bob
McGwier, N4HY, will have several presentations.

On September 30 Bob will present the Sunday Seminar, "A Stroll Through
Software Radio, Information Theory, and Some Applications." Software
Radio will be the main theme and a package of tutorials and give away
software will be a part of the seminar.

The Software Defined Radio linear transponder system in AMSAT's
spacecraft
will be discussed. Some necessary information theory will be discussed
with examples with the goal of leaving the attendee with a working know-
ledge of the practical use of this theory in thinking about
communication
systems. As time permits, Bob will show some software radio systems from

the $30 softrock40 to GnuRadio/USRP doing multi megabit per second OFDM
on the air and then a technical description of the Flex5000 and DttSP
will be given.

Additional Software Defined Radio topics among the digital offerings
at the conference include:

+ The FSM Virtual Radio Kernel: Why, What, & How (In That Order);
Frank Brickle, PhD, AB2KT

+ AMSAT¹s Phase IV (lite)?; Bob McGwier

+ On A Method for Automatic Image Balancing in IQ Mixer Based Software
Defined Receivers; Bob McGwier, N4HY

+ TPSK31: Getting the Trellis Coded Modulation Advantage;
Bob McGwier, N4HY

+ The Flex 5000 Software Defined Transceiver;
Gerald Youngblood, K5SDR

And also known to AMSAT members, Bob Bruninga, WB4APR has written a
paper for the conference: The APRS Local Voice Repeater Initiative.

Additional information and on-line registration is at:
http://www.tapr.org/dcc

[ANS thanks TAPR for the above information]

/EX


SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-238.04
Satellite Shorts From All Over

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 238.04
From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
August 26, 2007
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-238.04

+ Satellite operators can find the latest information about New
Zealand's
KiwiSAT at http://www.kiwisat.org which is updated weekly. Terry,
ZL3QL wrote, "The project is well down the track to completion and
this
page will give a good idea of what is still required." He invited
ama-
teurs to check out and respond to
http://www.kiwisat.org.nz/funding.html.

+ Matthias, DD1US invites satellite operators to visit his "Sounds from
Space" site at http://www.dd1us.de. He has posted a collection of
recordings from various space objects. Most of them are ham radio
satellites and space ships.

+ NASA's two venerable Voyager spacecraft are celebrating three decades
of flight as they head toward interstellar space. Their ongoing
odysseys
mark an unprecedented and historic accomplishment. Voyager 2 launched
on
Aug. 20, 1977, and Voyager 1 launched on Sept. 5, 1977. They continue
to
return information from distances more than three times farther away
than
Pluto.

+ Zarya, the International Space Station's first component to go into
space, passed the 50,000th orbit mark this week on August 14. Zarya,
which is Russian for "Sunrise", was funded by the United States and
built by Russia. It launched atop a Proton rocket from Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Nov. 20, 1998.

+ An interactive guide to the International Space Station can be found
on-line at: http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/ISSRG/index.htm.

+ Google Earth software has now added the capability to view images of
the sky. Using the new "Sky in Google Earth" feature you can zoom in
Hubble images. Version 4.2 of the software at
http://earth.google.com/
contains the additional sky watching features.

+ While not quite amateur radio related, many hams enjoy learning about
scientific work in other fields. The events taking place today at
CERN's
Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva, Switzerland by one of the
world's
largest assembled teams of scientists attempting to discover what is
considered the "Holy Grail" of particle physics, the Higgs Boson, and
recreate the conditions that existed a few seconds after the Big Bang
are highlighted in an interesting on-line BBC video at:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...21153918323669

[ANS thanks everyone for the above information]

/EX


SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-238.05
ARISS Status Report For The Week of August 20, 2007

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 238.05
From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
August 26, 2007
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-238.05

1. University Students Radio ISS

Fifteen students who attend Kursk State University in Russia experienced

a successful ARISS contact on Thursday, August 9. The students spoke
with cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, RN3FI, on board the ISS from Mount
Elbrus in the Caucasus Mountains, Russia.

2. ARISS Contact with Teacher Barbara Morgan, Successful

The McCall-Donnelly School District in McCall, Idaho participated in an
ARISS contact on Thursday, August 16, via the telebridge station VK5ZAI
in Australia. The school district consists of two high schools, one
middle
school, and two elementary schools and approximately 900 students.
During
the contact, eleven students asked one question each of Barbara Morgan,
KD5VNP, in front of an audience of 300. Local media outlets in McCall,
Idaho were present to cover the news.

The event was aired live on NASA TV and can be heard online and via
podcast
at: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/podca...gan_radio.html

Space.com ran an article on Morgan’s space activities including the
ARISS
contact with the McCall-Donnelly School District. See:
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches...gan_idaho.html

3. Upcoming School Contacts

Nanjing No. 3 High School in Nanjing, Jiangsu, P.R. China has been
sched-
uled for an ARISS contact on Sunday, August 26 at 10:49 UTC. To prepare
for the contact, elective courses will be offered on amateur radio and
contests will be held to determine the best essays and cartoons
concerning
ARISS. Other schools in the area will be invited to the event. The
school
has an active amateur radio club which was established in 1992 and has
been a five time winner of the national youth amateur radio contest.
Local
hams and businesses will support the students with the contact.
Extensive
media coverage is expected from newspapers, television and radio
stations
and the internet. The audio for this event will be fed into the EchoLink

AMSAT (101 377), the JSDXC (337 784) and JK1ZRW (277 208) servers. The
audio from this event is also planned to be fed into the IRLP Discovery
Reflector 9010.

Amagasaki Child Science Hall, located in Amagasaki, Hyogo, Japan has
been
scheduled for an ARISS contact on Tuesday, August 28 at 08:27 UTC. The
children will learn the history of Amagasaki, its economic growth and
the problems associated with its growth, such as pollution. They will
cover environmental issues and weather patterns that occur globally,
and will discuss the purpose of the ISS. An engineer will be invited
to speak to the children and will arrange for a tour at his company’s
research institute to increase the children’s interest in space.

An ARISS contact has been planned for Ashland Greenwood High School
in Ashland, Nebraska on Wednesday, August 29 at 15:59 UTC. A NASA
committee
was formed at the school, comprised of teachers from grades K-12, in
order
to promote earth and space science. The school will present one space
fact
per day to the students over a five week period and at the end of this
time
a contest will be held to see who remembers the most facts. Clay
Anderson,
KD5PLA, is an alumnus of the school and visited students there in March
2007. Information about him has been posted to http://www.agps.org/.
This event is expected to receive newspaper and television coverage.
This
contact is a Clay Anderson crew pick.

4. Gail Borden Public Library to Contact ISS via Amateur Radio

The Gail Borden Public Library in Elgin, Illinois, has been tentatively
scheduled for an ARISS contact during the week of September 3. Gail
Borden
Public Library has posted its press release on the event.
See: http://www.gailborden.info/LivewithISS.html

5. ARISS Video to be Presented at AMSAT Symposium

The Orlando, Florida Area Coordinator for AMSAT is currently working on
a presentation to be given at the 2007 Radio Amateur Satellite
Corporation
(AMSAT) Space Symposium which will be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
on
October 26- 28. The presentation will include video from the July 17
ARISS
contact with the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children.

[ANS thanks Carol, KB3LKI for the above information]

/EX

In addition to regular membership, AMSAT offers membership in the
President's Club. Members of the President's Club, as sustaining donors
to AMSAT Project Funds, will be eligible to receive additional benefits.
Application forms are available from the AMSAT Office.


73,
This week's ANS Editor,
JoAnne Maenpaa, K9JKM
K9JKM at amsat dot org