From: Margaret Leber (terhi.victor@logonet.com)
Date: Sat Aug 11 2001 - 20:00:45 EEST
For the folks reading this as a crosspost to linux-hams: the RUDAK
packet system aboard the Amsat/OSCAR-40 satellite is in the process
of comissioning, and the high-gain S-band transmitter is in
scheduled operation; the days of AO-40 as a SSB/CW/SSTV/PSK-only
satellite may be over soon. See the first on-orbit image from the
JAMSAT SCOPE cameras downloaded through the RUDAK at
http://www.jamsat.or.jp/scope/index_e.html
and detailed information about AO-40 at
http://www.amsat-dl.org/journal/adlj-p3d.htm
On Saturday 11 August 2001 11:25, akv@sagitta-ps.com wrote:
> For the FM-birds crowd, who like to work primarily with an HT,
> combine an inexpensive d/c and a modest antenna (K3XS, that just
> posted, was using a 16-turn homebrw helix into a Drake), an Arrow or
> any other 70 cm uplink antenna, and a software-soundcard-based
> TNC(free!), you have a satellite packet radio system that will work
> the world on an HT!
YouBetcha...when I heard last night what a fine job Mike was doing into
AO-40 with an Arrow, I started scheming about how to combine an S-band
helix with an Arrow. I'm sure folks here on AMSAT-BB will have a number
of fine ideas on that score.
While I do use a rotor system here at home, it was definately not
working very hard; I don't autotrack and a tweak of the direction every
once in a while (like 20 minutes or so) was more than sufficient. Stick
an Arrow on a camera tripod and you're fine.
And since you're not using the VHF half of the Arrow, one has to be
thinking about homebrewing that part with another piece of PVC...two
PVC pipes, one with a helix and another with a Yagi for the uplink
should do the job.
A small dish--I've been following the talk here about umbrellas and
woven metallics--might be something to think about for portable ops; we
need to find a good balance between gain and beamwidth. A Palm Pilot
application for tracking, with doppler calcs in it would be A Good
Thing as well.
Jerry mentions soundcard modems...has anybody recieved RUDAK with one
of these yet? I was about to try to get such a thing working with Tom
Sailer's Linux soundmodem program, but Stuff Happened with my soundcard
support; I need to sort out an apparent PCI conflict with my ethernet
card before I can get back to my PCI sound card that uses the es1371
driver; the via82cxxx_audio driver the native sound on the motherboard
uses is apparently incompatible in some way with Soundmodem (and
consequently also with Tom's excellent p3dtelem demodulator). Anybody
out there using ALSA with the VIA Southbridge audio? Does it resolve
the "sm[6037]: audio: Error, cannot set nonblocking mode"? I'd really
rather use the native audio than give up a slot to the PCI card.
73 de Maggie K3XS
-- -----/___. _) Margaret Stephanie Leber / "The art of progress / ----/(, /| /| http://voicenet.com/~maggie / consists of preserving/ ---/ / | / | _ _ _ ` _AOPA 925383/ order amid change and / --/ ) / |/ |_(_(_(_/_(_/__(__(/_ FN20hd / change amid order." / -/ (_/ ' K3XS .-/ .-/ ARRL 39280 /___ --A.N.Whitehead ___/ /____ICQ 7161096_(_/_(_/__AMSAT 32844____/ <javy.vqynoz@bulinfo.net>- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-hams" in the body of a message to zrxhezfy@roskapostia.tunk.net More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
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