[GreenKeys] W1AW RTTY BULLETIN of December 15, 1980

[Don Sentz]

OSCAR 7 and OSCAR 8 Orbit Predictions

I moved to California in 1979. In 1980 I moved to a duplex apartment in Manhattan Beach, CA. While there, I had a high quality commercial shortwave receiver and a CV-89A demodulator connected to my restored AN/FGC-25 teletypwriter set. I still have one scrap of printout from those days. See photo attached to this email.

The date printed in the message, December 15, 1920, does not look right, but I could not recall exactly which year it was when I actually received this bulletin. I also suspect that the "H" in "HR" might be a reception error.

I looked up OSCAR 7 on Wikipedia and noted the launch date, November 15, 1974, and the orbital period, 114.9 minutes. I then used the December 16 reference orbit number, 27841, for OSCAR 7 to estimate the number of years and days that had elapsed since reference orbit number 1, which I assumed to be on its launch date. I remembered to account for two leap days, in February of 1976 and 1980. I determined that December 16, 1980 was the actual date for OSCAR 7 reference orbit 27841.

I was stunned to learn that OSCAR 7 is still operational today, after having spontaneously come back to life in 2002.

-73, Don
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