[HCRA] FW: [VWS] SuitSat Status 4 February 2005: AMSAT News Service Bulletin

[Daniel Sullivan]

----Original Message Follows----
From: "Pete Norloff" <pnorloff05 at toward.com>
Reply-To: VWS at mail.viennawireless.org
To: <vws at viennawireless.org>
Subject: [VWS] SuitSat Status 4 February 2005: AMSAT News Service Bulletin
Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2006 23:19:56 -0500

SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-036.01
SuitSat Status 4 February 2005

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 036.01
 >From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
February 5, 2006
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-036.01

Silver Spring, Maryland
4 February 2006 at 22:00 UTC

Paraphrasing Mark Twain....the demise of SuitSat-1 is highly exaggerated!!

It is now nearly 24 hours since the successful deployment of the SuitSat-1
experiment. These past 24 hours have been a wild ride of
emotions...tremendous highs...deep lows when people reported no signals and
said SuitSat-1 was dead and now....some optimism.

It is absolutely clear that SuitSat-1 is alive. It was successfully turned
on by the ISS crew prior to deploy and the timing, micro-controller
functions and audio appear to be operating nominally. The prime issue
appears to be an extremely weak signal.

I have heard several recordings and have monitored two passes today. When
the signal is above the noise level, you can clearly hear partials of the
student voices, the station ID and the SSTV signal. One of the complicating
factors in reception is the very deep fades that occur due to the spin of
SuitSat.

Based on the information we know thus far, one can narrow down the issue to
the antenna, the feedline, the transmitter output power and/or any of the
connections in between. Through your help, we would like to narrow down the
issue further and also gather some internal telemetry from the Suit. If the
transmitter is running at full power, we would expect the Suit to end
operations in the next few days to a week. If it is not, then it will
operate much longer. Since we do not know how long this experiment will
last, we ask for those with powerful receive stations to listen for
SuitSat---especially during direct overhead passes when the Suit is closest
to your area. If you can record these passes and send the audio to us, it
would be most appreciated. We will continue to be optimistic that this issue
will right itself before the batteries are depleted. So please KEEP
LISTENING!

Based on what we have learned, we would like to provide the following
guidelines to save you time and facilitate gathering information:

1) You need as high a gain antenna as possible with mast mounted pre-amps.
An arrow is the minimal set...it provides very brief snippets of the
communications. HTs and scanners won't cut it.

2) I would not waste your time on passes below 40 degrees elevation. SuitSat
is too far from your station to receive a reliable signal. We have found
that closest approach provides several seconds of SuitSat communication with
22 element yagis.

3) The "gold" we are looking for right now is the telemetry information and
how long the vehicle stays operational. So if you hear any of the telemetry,
please let us know.

We are also working to get the voice repeater set up on ISS to downlink
SuitSat audio on 437.80 in the event that the ISS Kenwood radio can receive
the SuitSat transmissions. The repeater may be operational as early as
mid-day Sunday. Please do NOT transmit on 145.99, voice or packet, until we
have confirmed that SuitSat is no longer transmitting. These transmissions
interfere with our ability to hear SuitSat.

While the transmission part of the SuitSat experiment has not been stellar,
SuitSat-1 has been tremendously successful in several areas. Some of these
successes include:

-We have captured the imagination of students and the general public
worldwide through this unique experiment.

-The media attention to the SuitSat project represents one of the biggest
ever for amateur radio.

-We have had well over 2 million internet hits on www.suitsat.org today.

-Our student's creative artwork, signatures and voices have been carried in
space and are on-board the spacesuit--the students are now space travelers
as the Suit rotates and orbits the Earth.

-Carried in the spacesuit CD are pictures of Roy Neal, K6DUE, and Thomas
Kieselbach, DL2MDE, two of our colleagues who have contributed to the ARISS
program and have since passed away.

-We successfully deployed an amateur radio satellite in a Spacesuit from the
ISS, demonstrating to the space agencies that this can be safely done.

-This ARISS international team was able to fabricate, test and deliver a
safe ham radio system to the ISS team 3 weeks after the international space
agencies agreed to allow SuitSat to happen. This was a tremendous feat in of
itself.

SuitSat-1/Radioskaf is a space pioneering effort. Pioneering efforts are
challenging. Risk is high. But the future payoff is tremendous. As you have
seen, we have not had total success. But we have captured the imagination of
the students and the general public. And we have already learned a lot from
this activity. This will help us and others grow from this experience.

Keep your spirits up and let's continue to be optimistic. And please keep
monitoring!!

73, Frank H. Bauer, KA3HDO
ARISS International Chairman
AMSAT-NA VP for Human Spaceflight Programs

[ANS thanks Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, AMSAT-NA VP for Human Spaceflight Programs
for the above information]


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