Wow, quite a step forward in the amateur satellite world. Qatar and AMSAT-Germany have collaborated to put an amateur radio repeater in geostationary orbit. That's pretty amazing. Read more here:
https://hackaday.com/2019/03/18/eshail-2-hams-get-their-first-geosynchronous-repeater/
Read about a group of Norwegian students working on a satellite station for this bird:
https://www.la1k.no/2019/02/20/getting-ready-for-e%CC%B6s%CC%B6%CC%B6h%CC%B6a%CC%B6i%CC%B6l%CC%B62%CC%B6-qo-100-part-2-how-we-did-it/
And this is really fun: LISTEN TO THE DOWNLINK LIVE VIA WEBSDR!
We can't hear this thing from North America -- it is flying over the Congo. But stations in its footprint are putting their receivers online -- you can listen to the 10 GHz downlink via WebSDR:
UK WebSDR: https://eshail.batc.org.uk/nb/
Brazil WebSDR: http://appr.org.br:8902/
Great to see satellite DX come back, 23 years after we lost it with the premature re-entry of Oscar-13. Here's hoping we get Atlantic and Pacific synchronous satellites soon!
ReplyDeleteYea -- I was trying to build a UHF system for Oscar 13 but I just didn't have the skills -- the bird went into the drink before I was finished. Then came AO-40 -- I used to listen to the telemetry from that one -- one morning in 2000 the telemetry wasn't there. There had been an explosion onboard. Today I was listening to the Europeans operating through Oscar 100. It really sounds great. I think this will be the next big thing with amateur satellites. How long will it be before we catch up and have something similar over our part of the world? 73 Bill N2CQR
DeleteThe amateur television transponder on QO-100 is fantastic. The other night there were 5 or 6 ATV transmissions simultaneously. I have rx capability and am working on building up my tx capability, 42 years after I first saw black & white 70cm ATV and got hooked on amateur radio.
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