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Thank you John Ackermann N8UR, Steve Bible N7HPR, the TAPR board and membership, and all of you here tonight.
In these extraordinary times, I'm moved tonight to reflect on the basis and purpose of the Amateur Radio service.
Our fundamental purpose is expressed as five principles.
The first of those speaks to ...
"...voluntary service to the public...particularly with respect to providing emergency communications."
How proud we are tonight of the 350 Amateur Radio operators who have volunteered more than 5,000 work hours in the last ten days, and countless pieces of equipment, in the rescue effort at the World Trade Center at New York City and the Pentagon at Washington, helping us meet our commitment to the American public.
I ask for a moment of reflection on four hams in particular who gave their lives in our horrible national tragedy:
Steve Jacobson, N2SJ
Bill Steckman, WA2ACW
Bob Cirri, KA2OTD
Mike Jacobs, AA1GO
Please, a moment of silence.
The other four principles in the basis and purpose of Amateur Radio are:
"...advancement of the radio art."
"...advancing skills in the communications and technical phases of the art."
"Expansion of the...reservoir...of trained operators, technicians, and electronics experts."
"...enhancement of international goodwill."
Who, more than the hams in TAPR, have been advancing the radio art, the technical phases of the art, expanding the reservoir of technicians and electronics experts?
And, may I add, the hams at AMSAT and the ARRL?
Tonight, I want to look back over 40 years of technical expansion in one area of our great avocation.
In the beginning...40 years ago...my, how time flies!
Week after next, we will celebrate the 44th anniversary of the launching of Sputnik-1, the first artificial Earth satellite, on October 4, 1957.
Tonight, we're going to take a look back across 40 years at highlights of four decades of Amateur Radio in space.
I'll focus on the pioneer work of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, and our important early contributions to the radio art.
HUMAN MILESTONE
We look back at Sputnik as a major turning point -- an important milestone in human history -- because satellites have become such an influential part of daily life.
How many people in the room tonight were able to go to college because of the changes brought about by Sputnik-1?
What would life be like today without satellites used around the world for:
broadcasting and communications
weather forecasting
navigation
observing land, sea and air
scientific research
military reconnaissance, and
numerous other purposes.
And, of course, hundreds of men and women have lived and worked aboard what we once referred to as artificial moons of Earth.
Sputnik brought fundamental political, military, technological and scientific developments.
Even though the launch was only one event, it marked the start of what came to be known as the Space Age. It blasted off the US-USSR space race.
THE EXTRAORDINARY HISTORY OF AMATEUR RADIO IN SPACE
Just four short years after that milestone in human history, there was a milestone in Amateur Radio history.
The first Amateur Radio satellite -- OSCAR-1 -- was launched to orbit, on December 12, 1961.
Since then, private groups of Amateur Radio operators around the globe have built and sent dozens of Amateur Radio communications and science satellites to orbit.
WHERE DID OSCAR COME FROM?
I'll bet there are hams in this room tonight who remember that California group of Amateur Radio operators that called itself Project OSCAR, short for Orbital Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio.
Since those hams built that first Amateur Radio satellite, most of our birds have been referred to as OSCAR.
Remember when we had to explain over and over the difference between our OSCARs and the U.S. Navy series of Oscar navigation satellites?
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
We've had:
Radiosputnik
Iskra -- Russian for "spark"
Fuji -- Japanese for "wisteria"
BADR -- Urdu for "new moon"
Uribyol -- Korean for "our star"
UoSAT -- British for University of Surrey
Some other names:
AMRAD
ASUsat
DOVE
Guerwin
ITAMsat
JAS
JAWsat
KITsat
LUsat
MYsat
PACsat
PANsat
Phase -- followed by a number
POsat
SaudiSat
SEDsat
STENsat
SUNsat
TEAMsat
TECHSAT
TIUNGsat
UNAMsat
WEBERsat
I would like to avoid the purest argument in my discussion tonight, by allowing for two kinds of satellites -- Amateur Radio and amateur-related.
I refer to some as amateur-related -- if we built them or somehow were involved in their use.
I also refer to Amateur Radio satellites as hamsats.
WHO ARE WE?
Who gave the time, hardware and cash to build all of our technology-advancing spacecraft?
Hams around the world:
Argentina
Australia
Belgium
Brazil
Canada
Finland
France
Germany
Great Britain
Israel
Italy
Japan
Mexico
Russia
South Africa
South Korea
United States
... and others.
HOW MANY HAMSATS ARE THERE?
The number of Amateur Radio satellites has mushroomed.
Some 40 have been launched around the globe since 1961.
I say mushroomed because...
Only four were lofted to orbit in all of the 1960s.
Six went to space in the 1970s.
Seventeen Amateur Radio and amateur-related satellites were launched in the 1980s.
In the 1990s, two dozen Amateur Radio and amateur-related satellites were launched.
I'm sure lots of you in the room tonight remember those record launch years -- 1981 and 1990.
There were eight launches in each of those years. Imagine that!
1991 was not a bad year, either, with four hamsats and eight amateur-related satellites.
Many hamsats are in use today, as we'll see in a moment.
HOW DID WE GET UP THERE?
We owe a debt of gratitude to those sponsors of launches that carried commercial and government satellites to orbit and took us along for the ride.
Remember when we used to enjoy free rides to orbit as ballast? With rockets over-booked by paying customers, free tickets are few and far between today.
WHAT HAVE WE WROUGHT?
Most hamsats have been what we call Phase-1 and Phase-2.
You know, the ones that fly low in polar orbits or equatorial orbits from 200 to 1,000 miles altitude.
Such a low-flying hamsat circles the globe, coming within range of a ham station on the ground every hour or so. It stays overhead 15 to 30 minutes.
Polar satellites appear over a ground station about the same time each day.
On the other hand, a few amateur satellites -- known as Phase-3 -- are in long elliptical orbits. That keeps them in view of ground stations for hours at a time.
They range out 20,000 to 30,000 miles, then loop back, coming within 1,500 to 2,500 miles of the surface. Their long elliptical tracks are known as Molniya orbits after a class of Russian communications satellites.
What would a future Phase-4 hamsat be?
It could be an OSCAR in stationary orbit above Earth. Or, maybe, an amateur spacecraft at the Moon or Mars. But, more about the future in a moment.
WHAT DO OUR SATELLITES DO?
Early amateur satellites carried only one-way radio beacons, which sent down telemetry information about conditions of the onboard equipment and the space environment.
Today, hamsats still transmit beacon signals. Mostly the birds are used as sky-high communications repeaters. Their two-way communications transponders relay voice, Morse code and digital-computer signals.
Nowadays, most carry gear for digital computer-to-computer communication and store-and-forward message bulletin-board systems.
Sometimes they have transmitters for:
radio propagation tests
ionospheric research
radioteletype
meteor sounding.
Sometimes they have receivers for:
Radio-astronomy
Radio-location
other original science research.
And, sometimes, they carry television cameras. UoSAT-OSCAR-9 was the first hamsat with one. It was the first low-cost CCD camera in orbit. Is images were spectacular for its time.
WHO USES OUR SATELLITES?
Generally, hamsats are open for use by all appropriately licensed Amateur Radio operators around the world. I say generally because there are instances of closed systems.
Some of our satellites serve the general public directly by:
training satellite trackers
relaying medical data
teaching school students and science groups
providing emergency communications for disaster relief.
What do we like to do with our birds:
DXing
old-fashioned rag chewing
operating achievement awards...
Worked All States
Satellite DXCC
technical achievement awards
nets
contests
satellite fox hunts.
WERE WE PIONEERS?
Let's take a selective look back 40 years to 1961...
OSCAR-1, the first hamsat, went up just four years after the USSR launched the Space Age.
OSCAR-1 was an 11-pound "Orbital Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio" launched December 12, 1961, as ballast on a Thor-Agena rocket, which carried the military satellite Discoverer-36.
The rocket left OSCAR-1 in an elliptical orbit, just above our planet's atmosphere, ranging from 152 to 295 miles above Earth's surface.
Our first tiny hamsat measured 9 in. by 12 in. by 6 in. tall.
It did not offer two-way communications. Its radio only transmitted the letters HI in International Morse code. The output power was 140 milliwatts on 144.983 MHz.
I know 140 milliwatts sounds like real QRP today, but like true hams of the time, we had opted to go QRO. Our 140 milliwatts was fourteen times greater than the power of the 10-milliwatt radio in Explorer-1, America's first satellite. Let's see, is that a 12 db improvement!
There was a bit of scientific value in OSCAR's BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP BEEP-BEEP (or DIH-DIH-DIH-DIH DIH-DIH) greeting. The speed of the message was controlled by the temperature inside the satellite.
All good things come to an end, and OSCAR's battery was not rechargeable. It had only enough strength to power the transmitter for 22 days.
During that time, hundreds of amateurs, in 28 nations around the globe, picked up OSCAR's call from space and mailed in reception reports. That was postal mail back then, of course.
The satellite's low altitude let it stay in orbit only 50 days. OSCAR slipped down into the atmosphere and burned January 31, 1962.
WHAT DID WE DO NEXT?
Let's talk about some more firsts scored by Amateur Radio satellites.
OSCAR-2
In 1962, just 6 months after OSCAR-1, OSCAR-2 was launched to a 240-mile-high orbit on June 2, 1962.
OSCAR-2 was very similar to the first. However, its transmitter power was lowered to 100 milliwatts to allow its battery to last longer.
Unfortunately, it operated only 19 days and fell into the atmosphere June 21, 1962.
Does anyone here tonight remember that another OSCAR was built about the same time with a 250-milliwatt transmitter? It was not launched.
OSCAR-3
In 1965, OSCAR-3 became the third hamsat.
It was the first with a two-way signal-repeating transponder.
That was quite significant, being the first-ever active telecommunications satellite with free access to all. That's right, the first active telecommunications satellite anywhere, not just among hamsats.
It was higher than the first two hamsats, at 590 miles. And its transmitter also was more powerful, at one watt.
The transponder worked for 18 days. During that time, more than 1,000 hams from 22 nations chatted via OSCAR-3.
The first trans-Atlantic ham satellite link was made. The hamsat also carried the first direct contacts with hams in Eastern European countries, such as Bulgaria and the nation known at that time as Czechoslovakia.
Other DX contacts linked New Jersey with Spain, Massachusetts with Germany, and New York with Alaska!
This spacecraft was sophisticated for its time. It had two radio beacons. One sent a continuous signal for tracking and propagation studies. The other sent telemetry data about temperatures and battery voltages.
A few solar cells were attached to the satellite to recharge the battery. Thus, OSCAR-3 became the first amateur spacecraft to use solar power. It was not fully solar powered. The solar cells allowed the beacons to continue transmitting months longer than the transponder.
OSCAR-4
To mark the fourth anniversary of OSCAR-1, the fourth hamsat, was launched to orbit December 21, 1965.
Unfortunately, OSCAR-4 was the first amateur satellite to have a partial launch failure. The 30-pound bird was blasted to space aboard a Titan 3-C, but the rocket's upper stage failed. The satellite did not make it to its planned 21,000 mile circular orbit. Instead, it ended up in an elliptical orbit ranging from 122 to 20,875 miles.
OSCAR-4 brought several hamsat firsts:
It was the first to be powered fully by solar-cells.
It was the first to use two ham bands, receiving signals on 2 meters and transmitting three watts of power on 70 centimeters.
The first U.S.-to-USSR satellite contact was made through OSCAR-4.
Interestingly, no telemetry beacon was included in the satellite.
That left us unable to know why OSCAR-4's radio failed after a few weeks.
We figured the battery may have overheated, or radiation may have knocked out the solar cells.
The radio operated only 85 days.
Here's a strange bit of lore:
In May 1966, the U.S. worldwide satellite tracking network lost track of Oscar-4, but the small spacecraft was found again 6 years later in 1972.
THE BIRTH OF AMSAT
Remember Project Oscar, the West Coast folks who launched the first four?
In 1969, the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation - AMSAT -- was formed by an East Coast group of amateurs.
THE 1970s
Six Amateur Radio satellites were launched in the 1970s.
OSCAR-5
OSCAR-5 was known as Australis-OSCAR-5.
It was built by Australian students in the Astronautical Society and Radio Club at the University of Melbourne.
AMSAT managed the launch of the satellite, on January 23, 1970, on a Delta rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, to a 925-mile-high polar orbit. The Delta was ferrying an American weather satellite to space.
OSCAR-5 had telemetry beacons transmitting seven kinds of data about the satellite at 10 meters and 2 meters.
It was the first amateur satellite to be controlled from the ground. It contained a command receiver, which allowed ground stations to turn its beacon on and off.
Interestingly, OSCAR-5 had no solar cells and no two-way transponder. On the other hand, it did have a magnetic attitude-stabilizing system.
Its telemetry was received for 52 days.
OSCAR-5 really was the last of the first generation of hamsats. We would call the early group Phase-1.
OSCAR-6
OSCAR-6 started a second generation of Amateur Radio satellites, known as Phase-2.
Parts of OSCAR-6 had been built in the U.S., West Germany and Australia. Critical parts had redundant back-ups.
It was launched to a 900-mile-high orbit alongside a government weather satellite on October 15, 1972.
OSCAR-6's two-way communications transponder received signals from the ground on 2 meters and repeated them on 10 meters with a transmitter power of one watt.
Things were getting easy for ground stations. Low-power ground stations with simple antennas were successful in using the satellite.
OSCAR-6 had a sophisticated telemetry beacon, which reported information about many parts of the spacecraft:
voltages
currents
temperatures.
Where OSCAR-5 had 7 kinds of data reported in its telemetry beacon, OSCAR-6 had 24 -- a big leap forward!
OSCAR-6 had a magnetic attitude-stabilizing system.
OSCAR-6 also had an elaborate ground-control system to turn off parts of the satellite selectively. In fact, the hamsat could react to 35 different commands from ground stations. The ground controllers were in:
Australia
Canada
Great Britain
Hungary
Morocco
New Zealand
West Germany
United States.
Codestore was a digital store-and-forward message system built into this hamsat. Ground controllers in Canada sent messages to the satellite, which were stored and repeated later to ground control stations in Australia.
The bad news was static in the satellite affected its computer, which read the noise as a command to shut down. To overcome the problem, controllers sent a continuous stream of ON commands to the satellite to keep it turned on.
Imagine that! Where OSCAR-5 had been commanded twice a week, OSCAR-6 received 80,000 ON commands a day. The good news was, the trick worked.
The solar-charged batteries allowed the radio to work 4.5 years in orbit.
OSCAR-7
For the first time, Amateur Radio had two working satellites in orbit after OSCAR-7 was launched November 15, 1974. OSCAR-7 was the second Phase-2 satellite, similar to OSCAR-6, but with improvements.
For instance, OSCAR-7 had two transponders. One received at VHF and repeated what it heard on HF. The other listened on UHF and relayed the signals on VHF. The latter had an 8-watt transmitter -- 8 watts -- built by radio amateurs in West Germany.
This was very much an international bird. Australians built a telemetry encoder for it. It had three beacons, including one built by Canadians, and another built by the San Bernardino Microwave Society of California. Unfortunately, the FCC, in its infinite wisdom, denied permission to turn on the 2304 MHz beacon, so it never was tested in space.
In what was to be the first satellite-to-satellite link-up in history, a ham on the ground transmitted to OSCAR-7, which relayed the signal to OSCAR-6, which repeated it to a different station on the ground.
OSCAR-7's radio system worked 6.5 years.
OSCAR-8
The third Phase-2 hamsat was launched March 5, 1978 on a Delta rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. OSCAR-8 was in a circular polar orbit, 570 mile high, where it spun around the globe every 103 minutes.
It had two transponders, including one designed by Japanese radio amateurs. The rest of the hardware was built by American, Canadian and West German amateurs.
The Phase-2 fun -- and that's really how people thought of it -- continued for 5.3 years while OSCAR-8's radio worked. Unfortunately, its batteries died in the middle of 1983.
RADIOSPUTNIKS 1 and 2
The USSR's Sputnik-1 had launched the Space Age in 1957, but Russian hams had been only spectators as Western radio amateurs launched 7 OSCARs between 1961 and 1978.
In the mid-1970s, Soviet hams found themselves among engineers visiting the United States in preparation for the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz joint flight. While visiting NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Russian hams discussed OSCARs with AMSAT members.
Then, word of a USSR amateur satellite program leaked from behind the Iron Curtain in a 1975 article in the Russian electronics magazine Radio. Transponders were said to be under construction in Moscow and Kiev.
In 1977, the USSR government notified the International Frequency Registration Board that a series of hamsats would be launched.
Ham radio magazines called the hamsats Radiosputnik, or RS for short. They sometimes were referred to as Radio-1 and Radio-2.
The Russian work came to fruition on October 26, 1978, when a Russian F-2 rocket blasted off from the Northern Cosmodrome at Plesetsk. It carried a government satellite and the first two Soviet hamsats -- RS-1 and RS-2 -- to an elliptical orbit 1,000 miles above Earth.
Each Radiosputnik transmitted telemetry in Morse Code, reading out temperature and voltage data. They had solar cells and Codestore message store-and-forward mailboxes.
Ground control stations were at Moscow, Novosibirsk and Arseneyev near Vladivostok.
The satellites had very sensitive receivers and overload fuses to flip off whenever a ham on the ground would use excessive transmitter power.
For those of you who've come on board since 1978, that's a pre-LEILA technology!
The excess uplink power circuit breaker could be reset from the ground when over the USSR.
As you might imagine, western hams, transmitting thousands of watts of power -- ERP -- kept tripping the fuses and turning the Radiosputniks off.
The Russian ground controllers kept resetting the circuit breakers, but most operation ended up being over the Soviet Union since Western hams kept shutting off the transponders when the satellites were over North America and Western Europe.
You see how the more things change, the more they stay the same?
Those first Radiosputniks each weighed 88 pounds. They were cylinders 17 inches in diameter and 15 inches long.
The batteries in RS-1 lasted only a few months. However, RS-2 was heard for several years.
Were they really the first two Soviet hamsats? Even in today's openness, we don't know for sure that there was not a failed Radiosputnik prior to RS-1.
We do know many more Radiosputniks were to come, as well as three USSR hamsats known as Iskra or "spark" in Russian.
THE 1980s
17 Amateur Radio satellites were launched in the 1980s.
PHASE-3A
At the end of the 1970s, as more and more Amateur Radio operators were sharing the fun of talking via satellite, AMSAT began work on a new generation of larger Phase-3 satellites.
The third-generation would be more complex craft. They would:
-- use higher radio frequencies.
-- fly in Molniya orbits.
-- be over ground stations for hours at a time.
The first Phase-3 spacecraft was built. It was nine years in planning and four years in construction. It was constructed, integrated, and tested at Goddard.
Hams in Canada, Hungary, Japan, West Germany and the United States built parts for the satellite.
The satellite was to be launched on the second flight of Europe's then-new Ariane rocket from a site outside Kourou, French Guiana, on the northeast coast of South America.
In a promising development, the first Ariane rocket had made a successful flight from Kourou in December 1979.
Unfortunately, the second Ariane -- and Phase-3A -- were destroyed May 23, 1980, in a European Space Agency launch failure during liftoff from Kourou.
Within weeks, AMSAT began work on Phase-3B, which would go to space in 1983.
ISKRA-1
As we've said, most USSR Amateur Radio satellites were called Radiosputnik, but three had that different name.
Students and radio amateurs at Moscow's Aviation Institute built the Iskras.
Each Iskra had:
--solar cells for power
--a transponder
--a telemetry beacon
--a ground-command radio
--a Codestore message bulletin board, and
--a computer with memory.
Controlled by ground stations at Moscow and Kaluga, Iskras were intended for communication among Eastern Bloc hams in:
Bulgaria
Cuba
Czechoslovakia
East Germany
Hungary
Laos
Mongolia
Poland
Romania
Vietnam
USSR
Iskra-1 was launched July 10, 1981, on an A-1 rocket from the Northern Cosmodrome at Plesetsk.
UOSAT-OSCAR-9
Great Britain was an early leader in spaceflight and satellite technology.
It was the sixth nation able to send any kind of satellite to orbit -- after the USSR, USA, France, Japan and China.
Great Britain launched its Black Knight satellite on a Black Arrow rocket from Woomera spaceport in Australia in 1971.
Students at the University of Surrey were eager to get hands on experience.
Those students who were radio amateurs designed and built a Phase-2 hamsat, known as UoSAT, short for University of Surrey Satellite.
The 115-pound science and education satellite was blasted to a 340-mi.-high polar orbit October 6, 1981 on a U.S. Delta rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.
In space, the hamsat was called UoSAT-OSCAR-9, or simply UO-9.
Sometimes it also was referred to as UoSAT-1.
UO-9 transmitted data. It did not have a transponder for general chatting. What it did have were a TV camera, as mentioned earlier, and a Digitalker.
The TV camera was one of the earliest two-dimensional charge-coupled device arrays.
In fact, it was the first low-cost CCD television camera in orbit anywhere.
Considering the newness of the technology, its pictures from space, with a resolution of around 2 kilometers or 1.24 miles, were spectacular.
In an eye-catching development, UO-9 had a synthesized radio voice -- a Digitalker -- with a 150-word vocabulary to read out spacecraft condition reports.
The satellite also had a magnetometer and detectors for radiation and particles.
It had VHF, UHF and microwave beacons. For propagation studies, it had shortwave beacons near 7, 14, 21 and 28 MHz.
UO-9 had Codestore for messages.
A control computer in the satellite could be reprogrammed from the ground.
Unfortunately, in 1982, a software error mistakenly turned on both beacons at the same time, preventing the hamsat's receiver from hearing signals from controllers. In a wonderful recovery action, Surrey hams called on radio amateurs at Stanford University in California to override the jamming. Stanford hams used a 150-ft. dish antenna to transmit power equal to 15 million watts toward the satellite.
It worked! After six months of running out of control in space, UO-9 heard and understood what it was to do.
Later, after eight years in orbit, more than 300 miles above Earth, UO-9 burned in the atmosphere October 13, 1989.
RADIOSPUTNIKS 3-8
As the 1980s dawned, the Amateur Radio club at the University of Moscow was busy building a covey of new satellites.
Like RS-1 and RS-2, each of the six new Radiosputniks weighed 88 pounds and were cylinders 17 inches in diameter and 15 inches long.
The Soviet government launched the sextuplet December 17, 1981, on one C-1 rocket from the Northern Cosmodrome at Plesetsk to an altitude of 1,000 miles.
At that time, it was the largest clutch of Amateur Radio satellites ever orbited at one time.
Radiosputnik-3 (RS-3) through Radiosputnik-8 (RS-8)also referred to as Radio-3 through Radio-8 had:
--store-and-forward mailboxes
--solar cells
--a Morse Code temperature and voltage data beacon.
Some had an "autotransponder" electronic robot operator. Hams on the ground could call a satellite and the robot would respond with a greeting and signal report.
As you would expect, the usefulness of each RS satellite ended as its battery failed. RS-5 and RS-7 were able to stay on the air until 1988. Today, all six are dead in orbit at altitudes around 1,000 miles.
ISKRA 2
The USSR launched its seventh space station -- Salyut-7 -- to Earth orbit April 19, 1982. Bundled up inside was the second 62-pound Iskra.
Two cosmonauts blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome May 13 in a Soyuz transport to open the new station. In Salyut-7, they unwrapped Iskra-2 and pushed it out an airlock on May 17, 1982, at an altitude of 210 miles.
Moscow TV showed live coverage of that first-ever "hand launch," allowing the Ordzhjonikidze Aviation Institute students to see their satellite go into its own orbit.
Iskra 2 was able to remain in space 7 weeks.
ISKRA 3
Later, on November 18, 1982, the cosmonauts hand launched the last Iskra -- Iskra-3 -- from an airlock at an altitude of 220 miles.
AMSAT-OSCAR-10
Shortly after its Phase-3A satellite sank in the Atlantic in 1980, AMSAT started work on Phase-3B. The 200-pound clone was built mostly by German hams and launched on an Ariane rocket on June 16, 1983.
It was named AMSAT-OSCAR-10.
Unfortunately, there was bad news.
Seconds after dropping off AO-10 in orbit, the Ariane bumped it, damaging an antenna on the hamsat and spinning the satellite wildly away. AMSAT had to wait almost a month for the satellite to stabilize in space before firing an internal thruster to change the orbit on July 11.
Unfortunately, the thruster didn't shut off as ordered. It blasted 50 percent longer than planned. That threw the satellite into an exaggerated orbit, taking it nearly twice as far away from Earth as planned.
Another kick-motor firing was attempted July 26, but helium had leaked from the satellite after the Ariane bump and fuel valves didn't operate. AO-10 ended up in an uncontrollable orbit ranging from 2,390 miles to 22,126 miles.
The damaged antenna wouldn't work right.
Farther from Earth than planned, the orbit exposed the satellite to more radiation damage. The incorrect attitude kept solar panels from orienting toward the Sun, so batteries couldn't charge properly. AO-10's transponders worked, but the broken antenna and low inclination made it less useful.
Its signals were weak. Access time was limited. Even so, hundreds of radio amateurs used AO-10.
In 1986, intense subatomic particles trapped in Earth's magnetic field bombarded AO-10's computer memory chips, leaving false information behind. The memory began to turn up mysterious data bits and the satellite became harder to control.
The satellite required solar illumination 90 percent of the time, but sometimes received only 50 percent. Voltage would drop when sunlight was low and AO-10's transponders would switch off from time to time. A command station would be required to transmit a reset order.
Surprisingly, AO-10 is still up there and still is tracked. It continues to transmit signals, but satellites launched later have attracted away most of its users.
After the AO-10 launch, AMSAT started building a third Phase-3 satellite to be launched in 1988.
UOSAT-OSCAR-11
The second science and education satellite built by students at England's University of Surrey was UoSAT-B. It was launched March 2, 1984, from California to a 430-mile-high polar orbit.
The 132-pound hamsat was renamed UoSAT-OSCAR-11, or UO-11. It also is known as OSCAR-11 and UoSAT-2.
UO-11 also carried:
--the first S-band beacon
--a Digitalker speech synthesizer
--an Earth Imaging Camera (CCD)
--Space Dust Impact Detectors
--Geiger Counters
--Digital Communications Experiment (DCE)
UO-11 has photographed aurora over the Poles with its sensitive camera that stores images in memory.
The legend of the North Pole ski trek is one of the great pieces of hamsat history.
UO-11's Digitalker held listeners around the globe spellbound in 1988 as it guided skiers across the North Pole wilderness from Russia to Canada.
On March 3 that year, four Canadians and nine Russians moved north onto smooth land ice beyond Cape Arctic at the top of the USSR's Severnaya Zemlya Islands. They were off on a three-month, 1,075 mile trek across the frozen Arctic Ocean to Cape Columbia at the northern tip of Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic.
It was to be the first trek across the Arctic without vehicles or dogs, and the first to be guided across the ice pack by a talking satellite.
The skiers had 100-pound backpacks filled with bacon, dried fish and other high-protein, high-fat foods to maintain energy and body heat.
The expedition:
--observed glaciers and weather
--measured geomagnetism
--tested physiology and biochemistry limits of endurance and isolation.
Obstacles included:
--storms
--open water
--thin ice
--pressure ridges
--temperatures to minus-50 degrees Celsius.
As the skiers crossed the top of the world, they were in touch with Russian and Canadian ham radio stations at:
--Resolute Bay on Cornwallis Island in Canada's Northwest Territories
--Severnaya Zemlya
--Ottawa
--Toronto
--Moscow
--an ice island base
--Russia's North Pole Station 28.
They trekked a dozen miles over ten hours each day, then set up a twelve-man tent, ate, talked on their radio, and slept.
They varied their diet of dried-meat pemmican with fruit, eggs and steak.
Mornings, they ate a quick breakfast, took down their tent, and turned on their location transmitter.
The party's position was computed thousands of miles away at a satellite ground station and sent up from Surrey to the hamsat UO-11. The skiers carried miniature receivers to hear the hamsat's computerized voice.
The satellite's digital voice -- the Digitalker -- announced the team's latitude and longitude in plain English around the clock. The satellite was in a polar orbit, so the trekkers could hear it every 100 minutes.
The team took 55 days to reach the North Pole where temperatures were 22 degrees below zero. They arrived April 24, to be greeted by press and politicians flown in from Canada and the USSR.
Then, the team made landfall June 3 at Ward Hunt Island just north of Cape Columbia -- a major accomplishment for a team supported by an Amateur Radio satellite.
In 1990, UO-11 again supported an expedition, this one pulling sleds to the North Pole.
Today, UO-11 is still going strong.
MAILBOXES IN ORBIT
In the mid 1980s, packet radio was a relatively new two-way communications technique for radio amateurs on the ground.
Builders began to outfit most new hamsats as pacsats to receive, store and relay amateur packet signals.
The pacsats usually had store-and-forward bulletin board systems -- bbs's -- to hold messages, creating electronic mailboxes in the sky.
SHUTTLE CHALLENGER
Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, reducing of flight opportunities.
FUJI-OSCAR-12
Japanese radio amateurs built their first Japan Amateur Satellite -- JAS-1a -- and sent it to a 932-mi.-high orbit August 12, 1986, from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center.
AMSAT labeled it OSCAR-12.
The Japanese name their satellites after flowers and they called this one Fuji -- wisteria.
Thus, it came to be known as Fuji-OSCAR-12.
Primarily a packet radio satellite -- a pacsat -- Fuji's transponder could be used either as a mailbox in the sky or as a voice repeater.
Japanese controllers were forced to turn the satellite off at the end of 1989, because its solar generator was unable to produce sufficient electricity for Fuji's battery.
A replacement hamsat, JAS-1b or Fuji-OSCAR-20, was launched in 1990.
RADIOSPUTNIK-9
There never was an RS-9.
Soviet hams wanted to launch a new hamsat in the mid-1980s, but launch of Radiosputnik-9 was delayed repeatedly.
Finally, the flight was canceled and the number RS-9 retired permanently.
RADIOSPUTNIKS 10 and 11
Soviet hams delighted the amateur satellite world on June 23, 1987, with the launch of a combo package of hamsats -- Radiosputnik-10 and Radiosputnik-11 -- aboard one large government navigation spacecraft, Cosmos 1861.
Part of a Russian satellite positioning system, similar to the U.S. Navstar series of global positioning satellites (GPS), Cosmos 1861 was intended to help Russian fishing fleets locate themselves on the world's oceans.
RS-10 and RS-11 were unique hamsats, at the time, in sharing space aboard the navsat.
It was not unusual at the time for hamsats to get free piggy-back rides to space on government rockets, but in space they had been separate payloads dropped off in at least slightly different orbits.
By comparison, Cosmos 1861, RS-10 and RS-11 were just one big package with the ham-radio sections sharing electrical power generated by the Cosmos 1861 solar wings.
A robot radio operator was built into RS-10 and RS-11.
AMSAT-OSCAR-13
As mentioned before, with its second Phase-3 bird safely in orbit in 1983, AMSAT started work on a third Phase-3, high-altitude, Molniya elliptical orbit, amateur communications satellite.
An international team of radio amateurs led by AMSAT-Germany built AO-13.
Phase-3C was launched on the first test flight of Europe's Ariane 4 rocket from French Guiana on June 15, 1988.
In orbit, it was renamed AMSAT-OSCAR-13(AO-13).
AO-13's orbital path ranged from as close as 1,500 miles and out to 22,000 miles from Earth.
AO-13 was the most complex amateur satellite to date.
It had four linear transponders for:
---packet
--facsimile (fax)
--slow-scan television (sstv)
--voice (ssb)
--radioteletype (rtty)
--Morse code (cw)
The satellite's computer followed a calendar in switching among transponders modes.
AO-13 provided near-hemispheric coverage, linking continents for up to eight hours at a time.
Weekly on-the-air net meetings were held via the satellite.
AO-13 had four telemetry beacons transmitting data via packet, cw and rtty.
AO-13 also had a digital communications transponder known as RUDAK-1, which failed to operate.
Obviously, solar power makes sunlight important.
Even a partial eclipse of the Sun by the Moon can affect a satellite.
During a 1992 eclipse, sunlight reaching AO-13 was cut 40 percent.
Twilight was reported in the satellite's housekeeping telemetry as a drop in solar panel temperature.
The low illumination necessitated turning off a transponder for a time to allow full recharging of the satellite's battery.
I imagine some of you in the room tonight remember the matter of the government radar signal ...
Ground controllers had trouble commanding AO-13 while the satellite was looking down on North America.
They discovered that uplink signals were being corrupted by government radar.
Commands had to be forwarded to Australia for transmission to the satellite.
AO-13's attitude can be changed on command by a technique known as magnetorquing.
AO-13 is remembered for delivering essential communications in 1992 after Hurricane Iniki leveled parts of Hawaii.
After normal public circuits broke down, AO-13 and other hamsats moved health and welfare messages from devastated areas.
AO-13 re-entered the atmosphere at the end of 1996.
Its replacement, Phase-3D, was launched in the year 2000, but I'm getting ahead of myself ...
THE MICROSATS
Challenger caused a temporary shortage of flight opportunities.
Competition meant hamsats, which had received free rides, might have to pay for launches.
Like civilian and military satellites, OSCARs had been getting heavier and larger.
If only there were smaller satellites again, they would fit in places on rockets reserved for lead ballast, and would need only modest launch services.
A radical design departure was needed for Amateur Radio satellites.
The answer was microsatellites.
AMSAT's new standard spacecraft would be very small in size and weight.
That would make possible cheap launches.
ASAP WAS JUST IN TIME
AMSAT received an opportunity in 1989 to show off its new technology when the European Space Agency needed to test a new payload carrier.
ESA's new piece of hardware was called ASAP -- Ariane Structure for Auxiliary Payloads.
It was a large flat ring meant to hold small satellites at equal distances around its level surface.
To test the new structure, AMSAT and UoSAT built 6 small Amateur Radio satellites for a free ride to space on an ASAP aboard an Ariane.
THE SIX MICROSATS
The 6 microsats launched January 22, 1990, to 500-mile-high polar orbits were:
--UoSAT-OSCAR-14 -- UO-14 -- from Surrey
--UoSAT-OSCAR-15 -- UO-15 -- from Surrey
--AMSAT-OSCAR-16 -- AO-16 -- from North American AMSAT
--DOVE-OSCAR-17 -- DO-17 -- also called Peacetalker, from Brazil
--WEBERsat-OSCAR-18 -- WO-18 -- from Weber State University
--LUsat-OSCAR-19 -- LO-19 -- from Argentina.
These pee-wees were nine-inch cubes weighing under 25 pounds each.
Their launch was the largest number of Western hamsats sent to space at one time.
In fact, it was the biggest single proliferation since 1981, when USSR hams had sent up six in one flight.
Let's look at a couple of them.
UO-14 and UO-15
Surrey hams successfully commanded UO-14 and UO-15 to turn on during their first day in space.
Later that day, each spacecraft's computer software was transmitted to the satellites.
Unfortunately, 25 hours later, no UO-15 signals were received at Surrey.
Operators tried for months, but no signals were received.
You will recall that Stanford University had helped Surrey back in 1982 by transmitting a strong signal to UO-9 to overcome blockage of that satellite's command receiver.
Stanford hams tried again in 1990, using their 150-ft. antenna with sophisticated digital signal processing equipment to look for any weak signal from UO-15's oscillators.
The big dish was able to hear UO-14 oscillators, but nothing from UO-15.
DOVE-OSCAR-17
DOVE Peacetalker may be the best known of the 1990 microsats.
It certainly had the largest listening audience.
DOVE stood for Digital Orbiting Voice Encoder.
DOVE-OSCAR-17 (DO-17) was intended to educate the public about space by providing an easily-received satellite signal for demonstrations.
DOVE was the first hamsat to transmit spoken messages promoting peace among nations.
School children around the globe were encouraged to write and speak messages, which were retransmitted by DOVE.
WO-18
Weber State College is in the northern Utah city of Ogden.
Thus, the name Northern Utah Satellite, or NUsat, was applied to a non-ham satellite designed by Weber students and launched by shuttle in 1985.
Later, one of the new microsats was constructed at Weber.
Known first as NUsat-2, it would become WEBERsat-OSCAR-18.
Favorable publicity on the launch of the microsats showered on Weber.
In fact, faculty and students had provided such significant time and materials to the project -- as well as to the then-proposed Phase-4 hamsat -- the entire state took notice.
Utah's Board of Regents overruled heated objections by the University of Utah and Utah State University, and voted to change Weber State College to Weber State University.
Regents said the successful WEBERsat launch was significant in influencing their decision.
WEBERsat's renown brought many elementary and high school students from the Salt Lake City-Ogden area to the WSU command station.
WSU students enthusiastically explained WO-18's on-board science experiments in hopes visitors would start thinking about space and ham radio.
I hope we're still doing that kind of demo.
LO-19
The Argentine microsat was a pacsat with digital message bbs.
The first message sent to the bbs was from the President of the Argentine Republic, himself a ham radio operator.
FUJI-OSCAR-20
Remember Japan's first hamsat had to be turned off in 1989 for lack of electricity?
Well, Japanese hams had a replacement satellite ready three months later -- JAS-1b, also called Fuji-OSCAR-20.
It went to space in 1990 just 16 days after the microsats were launched.
FO-20 and 2 government satellites rode an H-1 rocket, the first time Japan had launched more than two at a time.
THE 1990s
BADR-1
At this time in American history, it might be useful to shed light on the capabilities of societies we might not view as technological.
I'm thinking of Pakistan, where a number of engineers at the government's Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) are hams.
SUPARCO is at the University of the Punjab at Lahore, a prominent border city in eastern Pakistan, not far from Delhi, India.
Several SUPARCO personnel completed masters degrees in engineering at England's University of Surrey where they worked on UoSATs.
When they returned home, they built ground stations and experimented with UO-9 and UO-11.
With support from the Pakistan Amateur Radio Society, they started building a small hamsat in 1986.
Badr-1 or Badr-A was to have been ferried to space in a U.S. shuttle, but that plan changed after the 1986 Challenger explosion.
The spacecraft was shipped to China, from where it was launched on a Long March rocket. It was one of the total of eight sent aloft around the world in 1990.
Badr offered one channel for digital store-and-forward communications and stayed aloft 146 days.
AMSAT-OSCAR-21/RS-14
The Russian space industry labels improved spacecraft with the letter M, for modified.
For instance, when the Progress space freighter was redesigned, it was called Progress-M.
Similarly, where the first hamsats had been called Radio-1 and Radio-2, the fourteenth was modified and called Radio M-1.
After it rode to space from Russia's Northern Cosmodrome at Plesetsk in 1991, it was given the dual name Radiosputnik-14 (RS-14) and AMSAT-OSCAR-21 (AO-21).
That was because it was the result of a joint venture between the Russian Amateur Radio satellite club Orbita and the Adventure Club of Moscow, and hams at Marburg, Munich and Hannover Germany
At first, AO-21 seemed just another Amateur Radio package riding piggyback on a big government spacecraft.
But, in 1992, when ground controllers converted AO-21 into a voice repeater in the sky, it immediately became one of the most popular hamsats.
Like those popular Russian dolls-inside-dolls, AO-21 was inside a large government spacecraft, which housed equipment from the Ministry of Geology and Science.
And then, inside AO-21 was the German digital transponder RUDAK-2. RUDAK is a German-language acronym for Regenerating Transponder for Digital Amateur Communications.
AO-21 transmitted recorded messages commemorating events. And the telemetry beacon was heard to say, "I am completely operational and all my circuits are functioning properly."
THE DARPA LIGHTSATS
One of the intriguing Amateur Radio related developments of the 90s was relatively unappreciated.
In 1991, the Pegasus winged space rocket carried to orbit 7 small communications satellites -- referred to as Lightsats -- developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
They were not Amateur Radio satellites, but related to Amateur Radio through MARS, the Military Affiliate Radio System, which isknown for handling messages for service personnel families.
Amateur Radio operators were asked to help check out the 7 Lightsats, which had voice and packet radio transponders similar to the amateur microsatellites launched earlier.
The 7 Lightsats could stay in space only six months, during which time MARS radio amateurs managed some informative communications tests on military VHF frequencies.
Three-way voice contact from a base was established via microsat with an Aegis-class destroyer at Norfolk and a mobile vehicle operator in northern Virginia.
UOSAT-OSCAR-22
For the first time ever, on July 17, 1991, 13 hamsats were active in orbit at one time.
They were:
AO-10
UO-11
AO-13
UO-14
AO-16
DO-17
WO-18
LU-19
FO-20
AO-21/RS-14
RS-10/RS-11 combo
RS-12/RS-13 combo and
the brand-new UO-22.
UO-22 is a pacsat with bbs, but the satellite's most remarkable feature may be its CCD TV camera.
Notable early pictures included:
the familiar boot of Italy outlined by the Mediterranean, Adriatic, and Tyrrhenian Seas, and Yugoslavia and Greece;
an Antarctic iceberg;
haze over Djibouti, Somalia and Yemen;
French Guyana;
Egypt and Sinai, the Nile Valley and the Upper Nile;
Equatorial Africa;
Kuwait and Persian Gulf smoke plumes;
the Balkans;
the Great Lakes;
northern Australia;
Florida and the Mississippi Delta;
the Straits of Hormuz.
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was touring the UoSAT control room in 1992 when the bird flew overhead and transmitted a voice greeting.
Then another hamsat, UO-14, also delivered a message to the Queen. This one from from the President of Zambia. The Queen left a reply message which was returned to Zambia by UO-14.
COMING TO THE END
Well, I could go on about KITsat, SUNsat, RS-12, RS-13, RS-15, ARSENE, UNAMsat, ITAMsat, POsat, SARA, SEDsat, TECHsat, and on and on.
Do you see now why I say we have been advancing the radio art, growing the technical phases of the art, expanding the reservoir of technicians and electronics experts?
Remember, Amateur Radio satellites are experimental, so glitches do turn up. I would say that all hamsats have been successful experiments in the end because amateurs have learned from each and applied their findings to later models.
LIKE THEY SAY IN HOLLYWOOD, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE LATELY?
We've talked tonight about some of the exciting "firsts" over the decades of Amateur Radio in space.
We've recalled some pretty high-tech stuff that we've sent upstairs:
--digital birds with bulletin boards and cameras.
--FM satellites workable with an HT and a hand-held antenna.
--low earth orbit "Easy Sats" offering CW and sideband on HF and VHF.
--high altitude DX satellites.
WHAT'S WORKING UP THERE TONIGHT?
At least these 15 hamsats:
AO-10
UO-11
UO-14
AO-16
LO-19
FO-20
UO-22
IO-26
KO-25
AO-27
FO-29
UO-36
AO-40
RS-12/13
RS-15
And, of course, we hams have occupied a satellite, the International Space Station Alpha (ISS) and outfitted it with a ham station. As astronauts up there, we communicate with the rest of us down here via voice. The ISS packet robot also communicates with us.
I talked with a Canadian one day who had been digipeating APRS via ISS. He had an HT in one hand and a small handheld beam in the other.
Frank Bauer told us last week that the forthcoming ISS antenna system will allow for -- get this -- not only VHF and UHF up to 2.4 GHz, but also HF.
Wow!
I may be able use my hundred-dollar Radio Shack 10-meter rig to talk with astronauts! Now I think that's an idea that is going to excite some kids.
Eventually, there will be two different ham shacks aboard the ISS.
WHAT ELSE RIGHT NOW?
The APRS satellite -- PCsat -- and two other Amateur Radio satellites are due for launch later tonight.
WHERE ARE WE GOING IN THE FUTURE?
Let's see what is being discussed...
LOW EARTH ORBIT
Bob Bruninga told me his next idea for a LEO hamsat is a PSK31 satellite, with 3 KHz bandwidth up on 10 meters, to support 30 QSO's, and have it all come back down on 2 meter FM with no doppler! He figures that for the same power as a single FM bird, we get 30 QSO's using an analog uplink and a very popular mode.
PHASE 4: STATIONARY ORBIT
The dozens of Phase-1, Phase-2, and Phase-3 Amateur Radio satellites sent to space so far have not been in stationary orbits.
A Phase-4 hamsat, on the other hand, might be a large bird in stationary orbit -- 23,300 miles above Earth. It would remain permanently in view for use at any time of day or night.
At the end of the 1980s, AMSAT was thinking about such a spacecraft to stare down on the Northern Hemisphere. Some here tonight may recall that senior engineering students at the Center for Aerospace Technology at Weber State University volunteered 10,000 hours of labor to build a mock-up of Phase-4A.
That 1989 model was an awesome, 12-sided, 8-foot-diameter, 30-inch-high spacecraft -- the largest satellite AMSAT had ever designed. In fact, it was so large a student was able to crawl inside.
Unfortunately, by 1992 other demands on manpower and financial reserves forced AMSAT to shelve the Phase-4A blueprints. Nobody seems to be discussing a Phase-4 satellite today.
PHASE 5: MOON AND MARS
Today, the really hot discussion on the ham radio web sites and the AMSAT listservs tackles this question: Should we build and send an Amateur Radio spacecraft to the Moon or Mars?
Despite the huge path loss and need for big gain antennas, AMSAT North America hams seem to like the idea of a communications package, either in orbit around the Moon, or down on the lunar surface.
German AMSAT hams, on the other hand, favor a mission to Mars. The Mars project would be a mission of scientific exploration as well as space development. Communications would be a major element, but not the only consideration. Actually, in my opinion, that should be true for either the Moon or Mars.
What do you think we should do?
SPEAKER CONTACT INFORMATION:
Dr. Anthony R. "Tony" Curtis, K3RXK, may be reached at k3rxk@amsat.org or k3rxk@arrl.net. His Space Today Online Web site URL is http://www.spacetoday.org
