ANS is a weekly news service provided by AMSAT. Visit them at AMSAT.org

Release Date: September 14, 2024 Here is a summary of the news trending This Week...

💾

💾

This is a 1-hour version of the weekly podcast for This Week in Amateur Radio....

💾

💾

ANS is a weekly news service provided by AMSAT. Visit them at AMSAT.org

ANS is a weekly news service provided by AMSAT. Visit them at AMSAT.org

We’re guessing most readers can cite things from their youth which gave them an interest...

ANS is a weekly news service provided by AMSAT. Visit them at AMSAT.org

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) released today an updated version of the Radio Regulations, the...

Join us, every Sunday at 21:15 UTC (5:15 PM, Eastern Daylight Time, 4:15 PM Standard), for an informal livestream chat session about: – current space weather — the Sun/Earth connection — including sunspot activity, solar x-ray flares, and geomagnetic activity, as well as, – current radio signal propagation conditions on the shortwave (high-frequency, or HF) […]

ANS is a weekly news service provided by AMSAT. Visit them at AMSAT.org

Join us, every Sunday at 21:15 UTC (5:15 PM, Eastern Daylight Time, 4:15 PM Standard), for an informal livestream chat session about: – current space weather — the Sun/Earth connection — including sunspot activity, solar x-ray flares, and geomagnetic activity, as well as, – current radio signal propagation conditions on the shortwave (high-frequency, or HF) […]

After what feels like ages since I last ventured into the garden with my Yagi antenna and HT to attempt a contact via an FM satellite, I finally succeeded.

Last time I struggled with holding all the things, trying to find the satellite and using the radio. I only managed to hear for a short period and that was it. So I decided to make a phone holder which goes on the antenna. I’ve seen several people do this on YouTube, and there are lots of designs already made online. I printed this one, and bought a phone holder from Amazon that screws in.

In practice it wasn’t quite as perfect as I thought it would be. It’s probably a few factors, not being perfectly aligned, maybe the metal in the antenna messes with the phone’s compass and perhaps other things but I had to hunt around a little for the satellite. Together with deciding at what orientation I should hold the antenna, and if it’s about time I change the frequency due to doppler, still left me feeling like I wasn’t going to have a chance.

I did simplify the radio and audio end. Last time I had a series of cables from the radio splitting the audio into the voice recorder and into ear phones. This was either directly connected to the radio or via the mini-fist mic which has the three buttons on. I thought those buttons might be useful for swithcing VFO and adjusting the memories which have the doppler corrections pre-programmed.

This time I put the voice recorder in my shirt top pocket, and held the HT and used it directly. No audio cables. This cleared out the clutter and meant I had one hand on the yagi and one on the radio.

One Sunday evening in July I decided to go out and try it. I’d seen SO-50 was coming up and had a reasonable pass of around 10-15 minutes and at a good elevation. It was coming up over the neighbour’s house and then I would see it. I found it pretty quick and heard M5JFS calling CQ. I replied but he made a QSO with someone else, however, he then ended with “I think there’s a GM5 station calling”. Here was my chance, and I made the contact!

However, in the excitement I lost the satellite and only heard the very beginning of John talking about it being my first satellite contact. I did find the satellite again and people had moved on. I didn’t manage to make another contact on that pass.

Hearing John and myself on the audio made me “see” how slick an experienced satellite operator is and how much thinking I was doing just to say what I did 😅.

The D72 is a full duplex radio, however, I didn’t hear myself on the downlink. Now perhaps I didn’t have some setting right (although I checked it several times), but when I emailed John afterwards and mentioned it, he suggested that I wasn’t hearing myself when I tx’d because the sat downlink is weakish relative to my uplink power and it was a fairly low pass. So even with filtering in the radio, there might still have been some de-sense going on sufficient to knock out my downlink.

I have since made one more contact, also on SO-50, also not doing that great at keeping the satellite in my yagi’s path. I’ve heard people talk about printing out the sat’s path, and then working out landmarks around my house and what bearing they are, to then try and follow the path without the AR phone app.

What I am thinking of doing, is building a rotator for the yagi, and having the computer control the tracking. I think it would be a fun project. I’ve started buying some of the pieces for this simple rotator by the Australian SARCnet. It’s not a permanent setup but more of a sunny afternoon in the garden arrangement.

However, at the moment, because of the sunny afternoons, and the school holidays, I haven’t had time to make it, and any free time I have had, I’ve gone out to a SOTA summit instead! So it may take another 6 months before I build it and try for a satellite QSO again. Maybe next time I’ll try a SSB one!

Useful links

Some links I’ve saved for figuring out satellites:

• AMSAT Status page
• Calculate passes at your location
• AMSAT passes tracker
• AMSAT FM Frequency summary

 Halibut Electronics is working on a new satellite antenna kit!

This is kinda cool for two reasons, first because we've recently started attending the high altitude balloon meetups at Noisebridge. Satellite antennas came up during one of the meetings.

More tactically importanly though, the EggNogs docs inspired what be a better tuna can feedtrough for Projct TouCan's antenna! For notes, here's my original EggNogs documentation review reply:

The documentation looks great so far! I've made it to page 17/22. One thing:
 
 
For those of us with partners heavily into fountain pens, those of us who like to print out manuals on JIS B5 paper and then store them in Kokuyo Campus binders, page numbers in the table of contents would be very cool. (I know, I know, such a niche group :) )
 
Mostly though, I wanted to thank you for jogging my memory into a, (I hope), better solution for Project TouCans antenna ports. At present, they're inverted bananna plug posts. Banana plug screw terminals are tiny, and therefore somewhat problematic in outdoor environments. Here's an idea of how tiny
 

 

 
Suspending a two pound rig 6 meters up, eventually the screw threads begin to strip. We stuck with banana plugs though because the insulator around the conductor makes them perfect for mounting in a tuna fish can. Yes, I've read about how Yagis and dipoles are balanced and therefore have 0 volts across the antenna center, so theoretically you don't need insulators, but TouCans frequently hangs at angles to the ground and/or very close to the ground,  so, insulators.
 

 
Anyhow! The last figure on page 17, the one with the cool weather-proof washer, reminded me that gromets exist! With the correct sized gromet, we can put any size bolt pointing upward as an antenna connector.
 

 
And, even better still, we can source them from our local hardware store at the bottom of the hill!
 
Thanks Mark!
72 de KD0FNR Hamilton

In the June 2024 issue of IEEE Spectrum, the article, “The LEO Satellite Industry Needs More Engineers,” pointed out the need for more engineers to work in this burgeoning industry. It points out that the LEO satellite market is expected to grow from US $4 billion in 2022 to US $7 billion in 2031.

The article then focuses on the efforts of the IEEE Low-Earth-Orbit Satellites and Systems (LEO SatS) project. The article points out that it has held a number of workshops and other events to educate engineers and students about opportunities in the industry, but it makes no mention of amateur radio. I think that’s a mistake, and I’ve just emailed the leader of the program, Witold Kinsner, reminding him of the role that amateur radio could play.

Where else can students get actual experience with LEO satellites? Not only is there AMSAT, but many student groups have sent up their own LEO satellites in the past.

The article points out that LEO SatS has also sponsored a workshop on ground stations. I would refer them to the SatNOGS, which is building a network of open-source ground stations.

Incorporating amateur radio into the work of LEO SatS would be a win-win for LEO SatS and amateur radio. Aspiring satellite engineers would get hands-on experience with the technology, amateur radio satellite projects would get access to the latest technology, and the satellite industry would eventually get some trained engineers and technicians.

 

This video is an introduction to an international public-service and technology hobby known as ‘amateur radio’ (or ‘ham radio’). Amateur radio (also called ham radio) describes the use of radio frequency spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emergency communication. The term “amateur” is used to […]