English Edition of AMSAT-EA Newsletter

Spain's amateur satellite group AMSAT-EA have released an English language edition of their November newsletter  

It covers the recently activated linear transponder SSB/CW satellites CAS-4A and CAS-4B, upcoming DXpeditions and an article on the QBITO satellite.

The translation was made by Fernando EC1AME.

Newsletter Download - https://www.amsat-ea.org/app/download/9653739/AMSAT-EA-Newsletter_02-2017.pdf

AMSAT-EA - https://www.amsat-ea.org/
AMSAT-EA (Twitter) - https://twitter.com/AmsatSpain

 

Fox-1 Satellite 2017 launch

The next AMSAT satellite Fox-1 is scheduled to launch on 10 November 2017 at 0947UTC.

It will carry a FM transponder with an uplink on 435.250MHz with a 67.0Hz CTCSS and a downlink on 145.960MHz.

It will launch on a Delta II vehicle from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

New APRS satellites QIKCOM-1

QIKCOM-1, a APRS digirepeater was deployed from the ISS during Friday 27th October at 0915 UTC attached to the SIMPL spacecraft.

At 4 Watts, it will be 10 dB stronger than PSAT(84) and about the same power level as ISS and should be easy to receive on the 145.825 downlink.

Users are asked to check your ground stations and make sure they are ready to receive  IGate packets during those initial orbits from all over the globe.

Being released from ISS, QIKCOM-1 will, of course, have the same Elements and tracking info as ISS until they begin to separate. This means passes over the USA every 90 minutes beginning at 0630 EDT in the Southeast and ending after 1440 PDT in Southern California.

QIKCOM-1 is not intended for UNATTENDED BEACONS. It is designed for Live Operations and experiments only.

For the initial passes, do not attempt 2-way contacts. Just set your STATUS text to indicate your TX power and antenna type and transmit at 1m intervals ATTENDED as described on the web page during these first few orbits. So we can get statistics on uplink quality.

More Infomration - http://aprs.org/qikcom-1.html