[Ham-News] Amateur Radio Newsline 1313 - October 11, 2002

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Amateur Radio Newsline 1313 - October 11, 2002 
 
The following is a Q-S-T.  
 
A first ever Amateur Radio satellite for New Zealand and hams are 
honored in the U-S mid-West  These stories are first on Amateur Radio 
Newsline report number 1313 coming your way right now. 
  
** 
 
HAM RADIO IN SPACE:  ZL ANNOUNCES PLANS FOR KIWISAT 
 
Ham radio in space is coming to New Zealand.  This, with announcement of 
a new ham radio satellite to be designed and built down-under.  Amateur 
Radio Newsline's Jim Meachen, ZL2BHF, has a close-up look at Kiwi Sat. 
 
-- 
Yes, that's actually its name.  Kiwi Sat.  And in case you were not 
aware, the Kiwi is a bird with thick hair-like feathers, no tail, a beak 
one third the length of its body, and nostrils at the tip.  It looks 
like a cross between a hedgehog and an anteater.  And its found only one 
place in the world.  Here in New Zealand.  Its our mascot and we love 
it.  And now the hams of Kiwi-land are naming our soon to be built ham 
satellite after it. 
 
Like the bird that its named after, Kiwi Sat will be a bit unusual in 
its own right.  It will be a rather small ham-sat.  A 237 millimeter 
cube based on the early 1990's Microsat technology developed by AMSAT.  
But it will carry some 21st century electronics that will enable it to 
run both as linear translator for low duty cycle modes like sideband and 
C-W as well as an F-M transponder to serve the needs of the overall ham 
radio community.  This, even though the solar cells can only produce a 
maximum of 15 watts of available power at any given moment and an 
average of only 6 watts.  Uplinks will be on 70 and 23 centimeters with 
Kiwi Sat talking back to Earth on 2 meters. 
 
But there's more.  Plans also call for Kiwi Sat to carry some sort of 
scientific experiment and possibly even a digitalker module.  This would 
permit the satellite to identify with its own voice as well as provide 
some good publicity for the Kiwi Sat project.  All of this made possible 
by the many advances in microchip design that have taken place since the 
first Microsat was launched. 
 
There is one big difference between a feathered Kiwi and the ham radio 
satellite the hams down here are building that I should mention.  A live 
Kiwi cant fly.  Kiwi Sat will.