AO-91 Available for Amateur Use

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As of 06:50 UTC 23rd November 2017, AMSAT Engineering officially commissioned AO-91 (RadFxSat/Fox-1B).

AO-91 Available for Amateur Use

AO-91 Available for Amateur Use

AMSAT Vice-President Engineering Jerry Buxton, N0JY, turned over operation to AMSAT Operations in a QSO on the AO-91 transponder with Mark Hammond, N8MH, of the AMSAT Operations team during the pass over the Eastern United States.

N8MH responded and declared AO-91 open for amateur use!

AO-91 was built as a partnership with Vanderbilt University ISDE and hosts four payloads for the study of radiation effects on commercial off the shelf components. The satellite was launched on 18th November 2017 as part of the ELaNa XIV mission, secondary payloads aboard the Delta II rocket that carried the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS-1) satellite to orbit. AO-91 also features the Fox-1 style FM U/v repeater with an uplink on 435.250 MHz (67.0 Hz CTCSS) and a downlink on 145.960 MHz. Satellite and experiment telemetry are downlinked via the “DUV” subaudible telemetry stream and can be decoded with the FoxTelem software.

SARL Digital Contest 2017

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The 2017 SARL Digital Contest will take place on Sunday 3 December 2017 from 13:00 to 16:00 UTC.

The aim of the SARL (South African Radio League) Digital Contest is to establish as many contacts as possible between radio amateurs in Southern Africa using the PSK31 / RTTY mode(s).

The contest is open to all radio amateurs in Southern Africa.

Activity takes place on 80, 40 and 20 metres PSK31 at the lower end and RTTY at the upper end of the specified frequencies. Please note that USB must be used at all times. A station may be contacted twice on each band once on RTTY, once on PSK31.

The exchange is a RSQ report plus a sequential serial number starting at 001. QSOs with stations in Southern Africa are worth 3 points and 1 point for QSOs outside this area. The first contact with each area listed below will be used as a band multiplier. 

  • Area 1 to 6 is ZS1 to ZS6; 
  • Area 7 is 3DA, 7P, 7Q, 9J, C9, A2, D2, V5, Z2, ZD7, ZD9, ZS7, ZS8, FR, 3B8, 5R, FH and D6 and
  • Area 8 is stations in the rest of the world.

Logs, in ADIF, Cabrillo or MS Excel format and labelled "your "call sign" Digital Contest," must be submitted by 10 December 2017 by e-mail to contest@sarl.org.za.

G2BVN Memorial Trophy awarded to OE1WHC

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Professor Wolf Harranth OE1WHC CEO of the Research and Documentation Center for the History of Radio Communications and the Electronic Media (DokuFunk) has been awarded the Roy Stevens G2BVN Memorial Trophy  

Many know Wolf Harranth from the work he does managing the “DokuFunk” archive. DokuFunk collects and archives historic pieces, among them QSL cards. Wolf and his team do this with immense attention to detail and commitment. Numerous academic papers about radio, and amateur radio, in particular, are based to a large extent on the invaluable information available only in the archive.

DokuFunk - http://www.dokufunk.org/

DokuFunk Amateur Radio (Google English) - http://tinyurl.com/Dokufunk-Amateur-Radio