Big Solar Flare Likely to Disrupt DaVinci QRSS beacon!

The fellows over at spaceweather.com report a big solar flare yesterday at 1738 UTC (pictured above). This may, of course, have some impact on my 20 mW QRSS signal. I put the little Da Vinci code beacon back on the air yesterday. You can try to spot my Italian shark fins swimming past Pensacola, Florida: I put a miniature version of Bill, W4HBK's QRSS grabber in the right hand column of this blog. Just look to the right and scroll down a bit. Johan's Belgian Grabber is also there.

ARISSat-1 to Deploy Next Week

This project has me digging through the boxes, looking for my 2 meter gear. This looks like fun! From AMSAT:

ARISSat-1 is a microsat developed as a follow-on to the SuitSat-1 project. The satellite was launched to the ISS on January 28th, 2011, with deployment during an EVA (spacewalk) on February 16, 2011.

The satellite will downlink live SSTV images from four onboard cameras, live telemetry and messages on the CW, FM voice, and BPSK downlinks, as well as provide a 16kHz wide transponder for two-way contacts. All the uplinks and downlinks are based on software defined radio systems.

Telemetry will include spacecraft subsystem information, as well as data from the Kursk State University experiment. This experiment will sample the change in vacuum as the satellite slowly re-enters the atmosphere.

Frequency Information Mode V Digitalker (Voices Messages and Telemetry): Downlink 145.9500 MHz FM Mode V Imaging (Robot 36 SSTV from onboard cameras): Downlink 145.9500 MHz FM Mode V Telemetry (1000 baud (400 baud backup)): Downlink 145.9200 MHz BPSK Mode V TLM Beacon (CW-2, active with BPSK-1000): Downlink 145.9190 MHz CW Mode V TLM Beacon (CW-1, active with BPSK-400): Downlink 145.9390 MHz CW Mode U/V (B) Linear Transponder (Inverting): Uplink: 435.7580 - 435.7420 MHz SSB/CW Downlink 145.9220 - 145.9380 MHz SSB/CW

And for those of you looking for a bit of competition, there is a tech challenge:

AMSAT-UK has announced a ARISSat-1 reception challenge with a FUN reward. The different categories cover those with or without a FUNcube SDR dongle.

ARISSat-1 is scheduled for deployment from the ISS next Wednesday Feb 16 – it has a composite VHF downlink that will easily fit into the FUNcube Dongle receive spectrum.
The telemetry is 1 kbit BPSK and can, of course, also be received with a normal SSB 2-metre receiver.

The expected signal levels from ARISSat should be similar to those we expect from FUNcube itself (and also eventually from UKube) and the team are keen to discover what will be the minimum and best type of antennas for schools to use with a FCD. Therefore user experience with the ARISSat signals will be very valuable in making this determination.

To encourage everyone to receive ARISSat signals we are offering a FUN reward for listeners!

There are a number of categories for this challenge – they include:

1+ The first FCD user, from each continent, who can post a spectrum recording of the received signal together with evidence of decoding the data using the ARISSat software and of sending it to the ARISSat data warehouse .

2+ The first non-FCD user, from each continent, who can provide evidence of having decoded the signals and of sending it to the ARISSat data warehouse.

3+ The listener, using a FCD or not, who can demonstrate satisfactory reception of the telemetry in the same ways as described above, using the "smallest" possible receive antenna. The actual closing date for this part of the challenge will be announced later.

4+ All other entrants who can demonstrate that they have been having FUN!

Please submit your "entries", including your location, station details (including FCD serial number where applicable), postal address and reports to g0auk@amsat.org

Good luck,

ARISSAT-1
http://www.arissat1.org/

You can join the FUNcube Yahoo Group at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FUNcube/

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/FUNcubeUK
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ just lookup FUNcube

FUNcube SDR Dongle
http://www.FUNcubeDongle.com/

From The Guys Who Found the Nano-Sail Satellite Signal

Howdy Bill, and all the SolderSmokers listening in on the PodCast.

We appreciate the shoutout in #130 about the NanoSail-D excitement .!. Stan - N4PMF and I have been working over the last year or so to re-activate the Amateur Radio Club at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. We both have day jobs in the Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC), and routinely interface with the scientists and developers involved with projects such as the International Space Station, Space Shuttle propulsion, and more recently the FastSat program.

The NanoSail project is actually a smaller satellite that was carried into orbit by the FastSat. This NanoSail vehicle is only about 18 inches long, and a few inches square. No room there for high powered S-Band telemetry transmitters, so it carried a ham licensed 1/2 watt FM transmitter in the 70cm band. Maybe later we can get into more detail about all that if you are interested.

The NanoSail is the first successful deployment of a Solar Sail into earth orbit. The quicker story is that our club (WA4NZD) was started in the early-1970s, and operated Special Events commemmorating Apollo flights to the moon, Skylab missions, and early shuttle launches. Activity kinda dropped off in the mid-1990s, and the club is only now coming back to life. We still have VHF and UHF transcievers and beam antennas on a tower, that are ready to operate - and sometimes we listen in on ISS school contacts, or bounce APRS beacons thru the ARISS digipeater.

We of course got excited back in December when FastSat launched, and the NASA scientists asked if we could help them by listening for the NanoSail when it ejected. Unfortunately, Murphy had snuck on-board, and somehow prevented the smaller satellite from completely ejecting, and it looked like a loss....

Then in January the FastSat telemetry indicated that NanoSail-D may have 'popped itself out', and the Principal Investigator Dean Alhorn found Stan and asked if we could take him to the station "NOW" to listen for it. Sure enough, we had the right equipment, ready to go, and he got to hear it for the first time. We even had the AX25 TNC hooked up and it decoded a telemetry burst which allowed them to better estimate when the SolarSail should deploy. Dean was very very excited, and we all enjoyed a bit of the spotlight as Dean made obvious reference in numerous press releases to the role of the MSFC Amateur Radio Club in helping get the word out. The power of 'crowd-sourced' science became obvious as they received reports from all around the world. We are lucky to have been ready, willing and able to decode that early telemetry - it sure will help to validate and justify the existence of our little club station at NASA. You can easily find more on the internet, searching for NANOSAIL and WA4NZD.

Again we appreciate the publicity from your Podcast, and look forward to tuning in more often, and possibly sending you more info for your show. Thanks /;^) Alan Sieg - WB5RMG (http://wb5rmg.wordpress.com) Stan Sims - N4PMF MSFC ARC - WA4NZD (http://wa4nzd.wordpress.com)

Mark Twain, Tesla, and Edison

For Christmas my wife gave me Mark Twain's recently released autobiography. This put me on the path to "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" which I'm reading on the train these days. I was pleased to find out that Mark Twain was very interested in science and technology. He liked to note that he was born during an appearance of Haley's comet, and that he would die when the comet returned (he did!) Wikipedia notes that there was a lot of tech talk in Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" (one of my favorite books from high school days). Twain was close to Nikola Tesla. The wonderful picture (above) shows him in Tesla's lab. He was filmed by Thomas Edison (YouTube version below).

Getting Rid of Solder Smoke

I mean the smoke itself, not the podcast!

Frank, VK2AKG sent me this link to a good article about, solder, smoke and a simple homebrew way of keeping the fumes out of our lungs. (Steve "Snort Rosin" Smith take note!)

http://www.garypalamara.com/Articles_Solder_Smoke.htm

Our New Microphone!

Just kidding... That's actually a mic from an old Heathkit Benton Harbor Lunchbox.

I continue to get good advice from listeners on the mic issue. I hope to put this to rest soon -- then we'll shift away from AF back to RF. Several listeners advised me to stick to SolderSmoke's "homebrew or roadkill" ethos, and to avoid the temptation to solve problems with credit cards. Good advice! People REALLY like the audio with the old decrepit computer mic and the Linux Ubuntu Laptop. So here is what I'm going to do: I'll go back to that combo, but I will attempt to fix up some of the mechanical problems (the old mic is falling apart and it has all kinds of weird things taped on to it) and the electrical problems (it seems to pick up more AC hum than then D-104). It won't be pretty, but it will be a nice homebrew/roadkill device.

A question for those who expressed support for this mic and for the audio in #129: Didn't you hear the AC hum?

Audio Blues

OK, so the SolderSmoke community wasn't exactly Astatic about my use of the D-104. I was really kind of disappointed. After all, I'd risked my dental health (duct tape on my teeth!) in an effort to improve the audio quality. I found it especially galling that a new demon was added to my audio woes: AM broadcast band interference. QRM on the internet! I suppose it is somewhat fitting, especially for a podcast that occasionally dabbles in crystal radios.

Thanks for all the comments. Even for the bruising ones. They gave me some additional insights. Most of the problem is clearly at my end of the fiber optic cable. But I think part of this problem has to do with the fact that people are listening to the show with a wide variety of equipment: some are using car sound systems, some are at home using computer speakers (fed by all kinds of different sound cards). A very wide variety of headphones and earbuds are in use. Also, there are big differences in our ears! I, like many listeners, have some serious high frequency hearing loss.

But never fear, SolderFans! The quest for the perfect podcast audio continues. I have turned one corner of the radio shack into a roadkill sound studio. I have worked on several new (and several old) microphones. I have visited (and have actually read) several websites about podcast audio quality.

There may be a "name that mic" contest in our future...