************************************************************************** * * * THIS IS THE AMSAT-NA CBBS at ST. LOUIS MO, 24HR 7DAY AT (314)447-3003 * * 300/1200/2400 BAUD * * Mike Parisey WD0GML SYSOP * * Norm Newman NZ0Z Co-SYSOP * * * ************************************************************************** SB ALL @ AMSAT $ANS-133.01 ARRL NATIONAL CONVENTION HR AMSAT NEWS SERVICE BULLETIN 133.01 FROM AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD MAY 13, 1989 TO ALL RADIO AMATEURS BT AMSAT-NA To Operate a "All-Satellite, All-Mode" OSCAR Station In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the American Radio Relay League, there will be a commemorative station operation under the callsign of W1AW/5 on 2-4 June, 1989. This activity will take place at the ARRL National Convention in Arlington, Texas. The hours of operation will be from 17:00 UTC on Friday, 2 June, through 18:00 UTC on Sunday, 4 June. In keeping with the convention theme "FROM SPARK...1914-1989...TO SPACE," a "deluxe" satellite station will be set up. It is the intention of station planners to operate this station on every pass of every Amateur Radio Satellite that comes within view of Arlington, Texas, during the operating period. In the case of the UOSATS, demonstrations of bulletin and telemetry capture are planned. All modes of operations will be supported from Mode A, B, J, and L. Both AO-13 and AO-10 should be usable that weekend along with RS-10/11, FO-12, UO-9, and UO-11. Crank up your tracking programs and check your windows "of mutual visability" to Arlington, Texas, (between Fort Worth, and Dallas) for 2-4 June,1989. Icom, Tandy, Telex-Hy Gain, KC Tracker, and other manufacturers are providing support for this event. The ARRL is providing special QSLs for this event featuring the "Spark...To Space" logo. Every amateur satellite station in the country should have one of these exceptional QSLs. AMSAT-NA will be well represented in other ways at this convention. Forums on Microsats and Phase IV will be presented on Saturday by Doug Loughmiller, KO5I, President of AMSAT NA and Dick Janssen, WD4FAB, respectively. On Sunday, Keith Berglund, WB5ZDP, will present an introductory level satellite forum. If you are coming to the convention, please come by the AMSAT Booth or the Commemorative station to volunteer your operating assistance for the Commemorative Station. If you would like to volunteer in advance, please contact Keith Pugh, W5IU, at (817) 292-5633. Last but not least. A full size model of the AMSAT-NA PHASE IV project will be on display in the convention lobby for all interested parties to see. It will be hard to miss since it is approximently 8 ft. in diameter and was constructed by students from the Center of Aerospace Technology (CAST) from Weber State College in Ogden, UT. "See you on any of the birds during the weekend of 2-4 June, 1989." /EX SB ALL @ AMSAT $ANS-133.02 SHASTA SPACECON '89 HR AMSAT NEWS SERVICE BULLETIN 133.02 FROM AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD MAY 13, 1989 TO ALL RADIO AMATEURS BT All Amateurs Are Invited for a "Beginners" Seminar On OSCAR Basics Bob Dalleske (W6AMW), AMSAT-NA Area Coordinator, is pleased to announce that an all day seminar about OSCAR satellites is being planned for the northern California area known as "Shasta SpaceCon '89." This seminar will take place at the Student Center at the College of the Siskiyous located in Weed, CA. According to Bob, this seminar is being designed for amateurs, who at the present time, have only a "casual interest" in OSCAR satellite communications and would like to learn more about this exciting aspect of amateur radio. Bob has lined-up an impressive group of speakers which include: Ross Forbes (WB6GFJ), President of Project OSCAR, Courtney Duncan (N5BF), AMSAT-NA VP of Operations, Cliff Buttschardt (W6HDO), Frank Dziurda (K7SFN), Bob Lahde (NA6E), Steve Roberts (N4RVE), and Ed Westbrook (WA6IUM). These experienced satellite users will be "gearing" their forums to folks who want to know what it takes to to get on the AO-13. They will cover such topics as "What are Amateur Satellites and what does the future hold," "MICROSATs: The new 'bird' on the block," "A beginners guide to AO-13," and many, many more topics ranging from equipment needed to get started, and problems which beginners usually encounter getting started. Bob stresses that "technical-jargon" will be kept to a minimum because this conference is designed to inform all those who are not necessarily versed in the technical aspects of satellite communic- ations -- in short, you don't have to be a aerospace engineer or RF communications "type" to find this seminar useful. For more information about this excellent beginners conference, contact Bob Dalleske, W6AMW, at (916) 964-3154 or send a s.a.s.e to SHASTA SPACECON '89 P.O. Box 220 McCloud, CA 96057 /EX SB ALL @ AMSAT $ANS-133.04 AMSAT SHORT BURSTS HR AMSAT NEWS SERVICE BULLETIN 133.04 FROM AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD MAY 13, 1989 TO ALL RADIO AMATEURS BT Short Bursts de VK5AGR 15Apr89: *** AO-13 TRANSPONDER SCHEDULE *** 03May89 to 14Jun89 Mode-B : from MA 003 to MA 160 Mode-JL : from MA 160 to MA 200 Mode-B : from MA 200 to MA 240 OFF : from MA 240 to MA 003 Mode S Beacon 2400.661MHz is ON from MA 210 to MA 222 every orbit. 29Apr89: BLON/BLAT 211.8/+3.3 with a drift rate of 0.016/-0.061 deg/day. de DB2OS 01May89: *** AO-10 TRANSPONDER SCHEDULE *** 01May89 to 13Jul89 Mode-B : from MA 025 to MA 225 OFF : from MA 226 to MA 024 de DB2OS 01May89: *** AO-10 TRANSPONDER SCHEDULE *** 14Jul89 to 01Sep89 Mode-B : from MA 000 to MA 225 OFF : % Many AO-13 users are unaware that there is an AMSAT Operations Net which is conducted on AO-13 several times each month to help answer questions about OSCAR satellites and to provide information about the many exciting things going on in AMSAT. The following is a list of the times for the Ops Net. Please place this list in a convenient place in your OSCAR station so that you won't miss out on this interesting net which is offered as a service to all AMSAT members. Here is the Ops Net schedule through May: Date UTC orb-phs NCS 14 May 0400 702-056 N5BF (13 May local time, U.S.) 21 May 0200 716-188 (20 May local) 28 May 0200 731-105 (27 May local) The following is the operating schedule for FO-12 for the entire month of May and June: DATE MODE OPERATING PERIOD 05/21/89 JD 03:11 UTC until 11:23 UTC 05/24/89 JD 08:41 UTC until 01:37 UTC on 05/25/89 05/28/89 JD 00:56 UTC until 09:08 UTC 06/03/89 JD 05:46 UTC until 00:44 UTC on 06/04/89 06/09/89 JA 04:25 UTC until 21:20 UTC 06/21/89 JA 01:43 UTC until 18:38 UTC 06/24/89 JA 01:03 UTC until 17:58 UTC 06/29/89 JA 00:35 UTC until 15:29 UTC As a reminder to those who made contacts with the Mir Space Station and would like to obtain a QSL card confirming the contact, you can send your card to the the following QSL Bureau for U1MIR, U2MIR,...,U5MIR: Boris Stepanov, UW3AX P.O. Box 679 Moscow, 107207 USSR /EX FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! THE FOLLOWING ADDED BY AMSAT-NA CBBS at St. Louis (314) 447-3003 24hr 7day 300/1200/2400 baud. This section may have additions through the week! RUSSIAN PHRASES FOR AMATEUR RADIO: This is a new 20-page syllabus compiled by W6HJK to help amateurs better communicate with their Soviet colleagues. You need not be an expert in Russian, only interested in "trying." The booklet provides (1) English words and phrases for QSOs, accompanied by (2) the Russian translation and (3) the English transliteration, to assist you in pronouncing the Russian. The syllabus follows the natural sequence of a QSO. There are additional sections on the Russian alphabet, phonetics, CW characters, numerals, and given names. Suggestions are made for addressing mail to the Soviet Union. The author undertook this project out of a personal interest in improving the quality of his QSOs with Soviet hams and to enhance USA-USSR relations. This booklet is provided free of charge, with the first printing and mailing funded by Beyond War, an educational foundation to build global dialogue and cooperation. If it is useful, you may later choose to make a contribution to help sustain this project. Requests should be sent to: RUSSIAN PHRASES FOR AMATEUR RADIO Len Traubman, W6HJK 1448 Cedarwood Drive San Mateo, California 94403, USA PAKISTANI BIRDS: I believe that I might be able to shed some light on the recent IFRB filing by Pakistan wrt their BADR-1 spacecraft. (BADR = new moon, in Urdu) We have been aware that SUPARCO (Space & Upper Atmosphere Commission of Pakistan) has been building a small satellite - based on the UoSAT experience and intended for launch on the Shuttle (the structure is closely based on the NUSAT scheme). UoSAT has co-operated with SUPARCO for several years, with a number of their scientists and engineers taking Masters degrees at Surrey and undertaking projects within the UoSAT Unit. The original intention was for SUPARCO to work alongside UoSAT to develop a small spacecraft, however after working closely with UoSAT for a year or so they decided that they were in a position to 'go it alone'! SUPARCO in Karachi and at the University of the Punjab in Lahore have two groundstations which have been participating in the UO-11 DCE, operating with amateur radio calls of AP2SUP and AP2PUL. UoSAT has not been involved in any way (at least, knowingly) in the design of the BADR spacecraft and certainly not in the selection of frequencies. I had, however, surmised the frequencies some time ago after I was informed of a crystal order that they had placed with a manufacturer! To the best of my knowledge, SUPARCO intends to operate these spacecraft within the amateur satellite service. The choice of frequency does not appear to relate to any band-plan of which I am aware. I hope the above sheds a little light. 73, Martin FREE FALL MIPS: The software operating system which will be used on both the AMSAT-NA microsats A-D and on the University of Surrey's UoSAT-D PCE is now running on all of the target hardware. The PCE prototype arrived at the offices of Quadron Service Corporation in Torrance, California this week, and is now running the software. Quadron is dontating the use of its commerical operating multi-tasking system, qCF to the amateur radio satellites. The software has been running for several weeks on the wirewrap version of the Microsat CPU. More information on this weeks's PCE events should appear shortly from AMSAT-UK. To give you an idea of the amount of orbital compute power that will be available after the launch of these satellites, I've run a compute-power benchmark on several machines, the results are given below. To give you an idea of the software development capabilities, the same C source code and the same compiler was used on all the below hardware. The ability to run on any of these machines makes developement and debugging easier than before, gives us the ability to use a commercial compiler (Microsoft C), and allows for easy exchange of ideas and software between Surrey and AMSAT-NA. The qCF operating system allows many indendant C programs to run simulateously, and provides a program to program message exchange facility. Programs are compiled and linked with standard Microsoft utilities; the resulting .EXE file is fed to an upload program for transmission to the spacecraft, where it is added to the mix of running tasks. CPU speeds/Dhrystons 12MAY89 ** UoSAT PCE data added ** Using a dhryston C benchmark from Sept. '86 DDJ p.88, here are some performance numbers (using a 6MHz AT as the index). The same compiler and options were used (/AS /Ze /Zp /Ot /Gs ). /Gs (no stack checking) was used because the S/C stack check is different than the dos version. Normally /G1 (80186 instruction set) would be used for S/C programs. The RIC is the PC card we're using for the simulator and for SW development. Device CPU Clock dhrystons/sec index IBM PC 8088 4.77 MHz 531 0.29 AMSAT flight V40 4.608 MHz 538* 0.29* AMSAT proto V40 7.372 MHz 861 0.47 RIC 80186 7.3728 MHz 1391 + 0.75 UoSAT PCE 80C186 7.3728 MHz 1398 + 0.75 IBM AT 80286 6 MHz 1850 1.00 AT Clone 80286 8 MHz 2145 1.16 Toshiba 3200 80286 12 MHz 3762 2.03 + The timer resolution of 10ms gives an uncertainty of +-14 counts, these numbers are equivelent. * calculated estimate based on clock speed difference from the wirewrap prototype. The RIC, Microsat Prototype, and UoSAT tests were done under the multitasking kernal, so clock and scheduler overhead are included. Zero wait states were used. The difference between the PCE and Microsat proto in the above numbers is 16 bit vs 8 bit buss. Differences in the number and use of DMA channels, mass memory access schemes, and the fact that most of the processing will be on 8-bit bytes makes it hard to estimate actual performance. Harold Price, NK6K DINNER WITH U2MIR: On Friday night, May 12th several of us in the Washington DC area had the privilege of meeting Musa Manaroff (phonetically, the correct pronunciation is something like mun-ARE-off ), U2MIR for dinner at W4PUJ's QTH. We took advantage of Musa's trip to the USA where he is meeting with a number of space medicine scientists as the "specimen" to show that a human can survive 366 days in orbit with no ill effects. His trip will also take him to Houston and New York. Although we had some language problems, Musa's English was far better than any of our Russian and as the evening wore on, we all became more relaxed and communications continued to improve. Musa told many anecdotes about his trip. He commented that one year away from his family (he has two children, a girl 8 and a boy 7). When asked how long he was in orbit, he said 366 days, and 366 times 16 nights! He told about the size of MIR (about two normal rooms). He told that they ate well and passed their time playing video games and reading. He commented that such a long mission is very boring and that when the amateur radio equipment (a Yaesu FT290 transceiver) arrived in early November it provided much enjoyment. We all found Musa to be a most personable young (I'd guess his age at about 33) fellow! Musa received the U2MIR license while in orbit. Although he is an electronics engineer he had only been an SWL before, but he plans to stay active and he hopes the bureaucracy will let him keep using the U2MIR call. He enjoyed tuning around the AO-13 passband and 20 meters on W4PUJ's receiver. He said he is looking forward to learning to operate on CW. We told him of the AMSAT programs including our plans for Ron Parise to carry hardware aboard the shuttle next year. We showed him what the packet radio hardware Ron will use (a Tasco/Heath HK21 TNC) will be like. We told him of our Microsat activities and were able to show him a couple of the receivers that are being built here. We then presented him with an honorary AMSAT life membership; he was interested to know that Arthur Clarke had also received one. We also presented him with several AMSAT pins and the new Microsat embroidered patch. Those of us from the DC area that were present were Dick & Jackie Daniels (W4PUJ), Rich & Phyllis Zwirko (K1HTV), John & Martha Shew/Saragovitz (N4QQ) and Tom & Elizabeth Clark (W3IWI). 73 de W3IWI