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 ATHENA-1 Loockheed Martin Launched succesfully Sep. 30, 2001 - 02:40 UTC |
 Kodiak Launch Complex Alaska |
| Kodiak Launch Complex, Alaska - Sep. 30, 2001 |
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Current Keplerian Elements PCSAT 1 26931U 01043C 01305.71759493 .00001836 00000-0 76505-3 0 437 2 26931 67.0518 34.9764 0005525 251.7601 108.2896 14.28449895 4655 |
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P C S a t |
Launch at 0240z
successful. PCsat separates at 0350z and is activated with 1 minute
1200 baud AX.25 AFSK telemetry on 145.825. de
WB4APR@amsat.org, Bob
PCSat IGate Station Europe 24/24h:
IK1SLD
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PCsat has completed its first
month in space and is performing well its planned mission of mobile
position and status reporting. I believe over 140 users have been
seen in the European footprint and probably a comparable number in the USA
and many "downunder". PCsat is currently in its maximum
eclipse phase, and so the 9600 baud UHF receivers are turned off and the
GPS remains off except for a 8 minute period over the command station once
a day. Lessons Learned: 1) Users seem to be following the user guidelines quite well thus assuring that everyone gets a fair chance. In fact, some users adhereing to the once-every-2-minute uplink rate are showing as many as 5 to 7 successes per pass and should consider further reducing their rate to one per 5 minutes. My mobile seems to get in reliably at a one-per-5 minute rate. 2) Some users may not understand the significance of only using W3ADO-1 as the path and are also including long multi-hop terrestrial paths tacked onto the end that can cause drastic uplink QRM in some areas. We are now posting bulletins on PCsat to try to educate these users. 3) The http://pcsat.aprs.org site is now on-line to allow browser access to the downlink. A big thanks to K4HG, Steve Dimse for maintaining this page. But this page only works if there are active SATGATES in your area, so more feeds is a benefit, especially in some of the remote areas of the world. ALso we will need additional feeds for 9600 baud and for Starshine/Sapphire and other soon-to-be simple AX.25 satellites. 4) We would be happy to see more actual "travelers" using PCsat such as off-shore boaters, DXpeditions, big ham radio events and so forth. If people will let us konw of any special events, we would be happy to add them to our WEB page and/or downlink bulletins. 5) All of PCsat's hardware is working well except for the loss of the experimental -Z solar array. The only un-exercised features are the LED communication experiment and the "synchronizer". When optical conditions are right in a few weeks (Early evening pass over the east coast on a clear night), we may try to flash the LEDs for a visual. The synchronizer is a circuit that will bundle packets in transmissions of once every 8 seconds to improve T/R TX delays efficiency, but so far the light load has not warranted this technique. de WB4APR@amsat.org, Bob |
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One 0.3
sec TLM @ 9600 baud on 145.825 MHz every 2 mins. |
S T A R S
H I N E |
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S A P P H
I R E |
One sec
CW dit-dit Beacon on 437.100 MHz every 1 min.
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