Grid Hunters who Use Satellites Risk Losing an Important Resource

AMSAT's Gridmaster Heat Map has served as an invaluable guide to grid-chasers using satellites, for those activating hams who need to be aware of which grids are in greatest need. AMSAT says in a recent weekly service bulletin that the map may be going away unless a replacement manager can be found.

Paul Overn, KEØPBR, will be stepping down after three years at the helm of the project in which he tracked grid rarity based on crowdsourced data from hams who updated him. Paul's Twitter feed, atgridmasterheat (@GridMasterHeat) displays a color-coded map of grid rarities ranging from green - the most common - to red, for rare.

The map plays an especially important role in the pursuit of AMSAT's prestigious GridMaster Award. This honor is conferred on any amateur around the world who works all 488 Maidenhead grid squares in the 48 contiguous United States via satellite and has those contacts confirmed in writing.

AMSAT is looking for a volunteer to assume Paul's post. The candidate should be capable of collecting crowdsourced data and transferring it to a spreadsheet or some other format and providing updates every week to satellite users.

FoxTelem Version 1.12 Released

A new version of FoxTelem has been released ahead of the launch of MESAT-1. The new version will be required in order to decode MESAT-1 telemetry. MESAT-1 has an AMSAT Linear Transponder Module (LTM) and will transmit health data and images at 1200bps using BPSK. FoxTelem will decode and display the images from the University of Maine multi-spectral camera, as well as other data about the spacecraft.

This version of FoxTelem will still support all previous spacecraft and the CubeSat Simulator.

In addition to support for MESAT-1 this version also includes several bug fixes and enhancements. Questions or comments (other than “when is the launch”, because I don’t know) may be directed to chrisethompson [at] gmail.com or to g0kla [at] arrl.net.

Issues or bugs can be logged on github at: https://github.com/ac2cz/FoxTelem/issues

You can download it from these locations - https://www.g0kla.com/foxtelem or http://amsat.us/FoxTelem/

Latest Version of RSGB EMF Calculator

The RSGB has issued trial version 2 of its EMF Calculator app.

This version removes the restriction on frequencies below 10MHz and the minimum separation of near field boundary.

The app is being released as a trial version as the RSGB would welcome feedback from users.

You can find the app and more information in the RSGB EMF pages - http://rsgb.org/emf