 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||
|
|
 Previous: New HF Amateur Radio Antenna Installed on ISS |  Next: QRP Community: The QRP Community |
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
January 26, 2002
Another week, another interesting Web site: this one is devoted to the latest in Amateur Radio satellite-ware.
Working with a shoestring budget of $50,000, students at the Naval Academy in Annapolis built the Prototype Communications Satellite (PCsat), which is among our latest Amateur Radio Earth-orbiting satellites. Bob Bruninga, WB4APR (bruninga@usna.edu), the "father of APRS" (Automatic Position Reporting System), supported the project. As a result, PCsat is APRS-oriented and serves as an APRS digipeater, which means it is intended to relay UI (Unconnected Information) packets only. Connections are not permitted. Uplinks are at 1200 and 9600 baud on 145.827 and 435.250 MHz, respectively. All downlinks are at 1200 baud on 145.827 MHz.
 Bob Bruninga, WB4APR (center), looks on as ensigns Dan Boutros (left) and Brad Schwenzer (right) describe PCsat's telemetry sub-module. The PCsat Web page describes how to send and receive unconnected packets through our newest Amateur Radio satellite. |
In addition to supporting the project as Satellite Project Engineer, WB4APR built the PCsat Web page, which contains heaps of information regarding PCsat. There, you can find out about PCsat's emergency status and reporting (SAR) capability which permits a ham located anywhere in the world to use an APRS-capable handheld or mobile transceiver to send an emergency message to the satellite. Instead of digipeating the packet immediately, PCsat stores it and retransmits (stores-and-forwards) the packet at regular intervals as it orbits the Earth, in order to alert others of the emergency.
At the PCsat Web site, you can also download Bob's DOS software to monitor PCsat's telemetry in real time and send and receive one-line messages via the satellite. Climb aboard Bob's van and see his mobile satellite command station with its unique beam antenna system built from plumbing fixtures purchased at Home Depot. See who is using PCsat to relay APRS packets by linking over to K4HG's live "Amateur Radio Stations heard via PCsat" Web page or obtain PCsat orbital information at the Heavens Above Web site.
Until next time, keep on surfin'.
Editor's note:
Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, of downtown Wolcott, Connecticut, is an ARRL Life Member
and an incessant contributor to QST and QEX (576 pieces in 25 years), not to mention
the author of five ARRL books and contributor to a bevy of other ARRL titles.
First licensed in 1969 as WN1LOU, he upgraded to WA1LOU in 1971. Stan began
using computers with Amateur Radio in 1978 when he bought a Radio Shack TRS-80
Model I computer and wrote BASIC
programs to dupe contests and calculate antenna bearings. A virtual beach boy,
Stan has been surfing the radio dials as long as he can remember. Instead of
surfing all over Manhattan and down Doheny way, however, he now surfs the
Internet searching for that perfect page. To contact Stan, send e-mail to wa1lou@arrl.net.
| Previous: New HF Amateur Radio Antenna Installed on ISS | Next: QRP Community: The QRP Community |
