‰ Now 18 WPM transition file follows ‰

Despite efforts to keep the flagging VUSat OSCAR 52, VO 52, Amateur
Radio satellite in operation for a while longer, ground controllers
have yielded to the nearly decade old spacecrafts failing technology
and have permanently taken it out of service.  Launched into low
Earth orbit in 2005, the VO 52 microsatellite carried two Amateur
Radio transponders for SSB and CW. B.A. Mani Subramani,
VU2WMY/KJ6LRS, of the Indian Space Research Organisation, the ISRO,
said that VO 52s lithium ion batteries had failed, and the satellite
was officially decommissioned on July 21.  The ISRO website can be
found at, //www.isro.org/ .  We all here in ISRO do definitely hope
that HAMSAT VO 52 worked tirelessly and was a good friend to the
Amateur Radio fraternity around the world, he said. We are sure that
HAMSAT was loved by all who worked through her. Though, we are
deeply saddened by the loss of HAMSAT VO 52, she will never be
forgotten.  The VO 52 satellite was one of the most popular SSB/CW
satellites during its lifetime. One of its transponders was
developed by Indian radio amateurs with assistance from ISRO and
AMSAT India. The second transponder was developed by William
Leijenaar, PE1RAH, a radio amateur and graduate student from the
Netherlands.  VU2MWY said that VO 52 had completed nearly 50,000
orbits before it was decommissioned. Since 11 July, every best
possible effort has been put in by the spacecraft controllers here
in ISTRAC Bangalore to revive her back to life and to help her with
workload, so she wont be swamped when she returns, but with no luck,
he said. We thank each and everyone who contributed to the great
success of HAMSAT.  VO 52 had been designed to remain operational
for just a year, but it exceeded expectations by continuing to run
for more than 9 years.  Solar activity is suddenly weakening, and
yesterday, Thursday, July 17 the daily sunspot number was zero.  We
had no other zero sunspot days so far this year, none last year or
in 2012, and only two in 2011, on January 27 and August 14.  We had
48 days with a sunspot number of zero in 2010, although
Spaceweather.com reports 51 days, and they may be correct, and 260
days with a daily sunspot number of zero in 2009.  2008 had 239
spotless days, and 2007 had 152 days with zero sunspots.  Just to
revisit the deep trough of solar inactivity we emerged from a few
years ago, 2006 had 70 spotless days, 2005 had just 17 days with no
spots and 2004 saw only four spotless days.  Prior to that we have
to look way back to the twentieth century to 1998 to find any
spotless days, three, and 1997 had 57 days with zero sunspots.  We
have not seen any new sunspot regions emerge since July 10 and 11,
when there was a new one each day.  On July 8 two new regions
appeared.  Prior to that we saw a new sunspot region appear each
day, from July 1 to 6.  The short term outlook for solar flux shows
a flux value of 90 on July 18 to 21, 95 on July 22 to 24, then 105,
115, 125, 135 and 140 on July 25 to 29, 145 on July 30 and 31, then
it peaks at 155 on August 2, then drops to a minimum of 95 again on
August 16 and 17.  Sunspot numbers were 159, 166, 145, 102, 70, 25,
and 11, with a mean of 96.9.  10.7 cm flux was 177.4, 166.3, 145,
126.8, 109.4, 100.6, and 92.1, with a mean of 131.1.  Estimated
planetary A indices were 8, 6, 6, 5, 9, 7, and 5, with a mean of
6.6.  Estimated mid latitude A indices were 11, 7, 7, 6, 10, 10, and
5, with a mean of 8.


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