SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-275.01 NEW CROP OF OSCARS ARE BORN! HR AMSAT NEWS SERVICE BULLETIN 275.01 FROM AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD OCTOBER 1, 1993 TO ALL RADIO AMATEURS BT BID: $ANS-275.01 A New "Crop" of OSCARs On-Orbit As a result of last week's successful launch of SPOT-3 on ARIANE mission V-59, (26-SEP-93 01:45 UTC) three, and possibly four, amateur radio satellites have been "born." Late this week, two were given the names ITAMSAT-OSCAR 26 and AMRAD-OSCAR 27. The Portugese builders of POSAT are determining whether or not they will activate the amateur package on that otherwise commercial satellite. This is why there maybe three, or perhaps four amateur satellites. The AMSAT News Service (ANS) will carry addition- al information when available. At the time this bulletin went to press, the Korean builders of KITSAT-B have not yet designated it an OSCAR, al- though it is expected that they will do so shortly. These new series of amateur radio satellites will ensure that radio amateurs will have reliable "store-and-forward" messaging capability for many years to come. Also, the imaging cameras on POSAT-1, if it is made available to amateurs, and KITSAT-B will provide many excellent images of the earth. To date, there has been no "official" announcement about the release of these satellites for general use. Each of the groups involved with the operation of their respective satellite are currently performing "engineering" check-outs. Please watch in the ANS bulletins for an announcement of the commencement of general amateur radio operations on each of these satellites. The following table is a summary of the frequencies of each of these new spacecraft. UPLINK DOWNLINK BAUD ========================================================================== KITSAT-B 145.870 MHz 435.175 MHz 9600 145.980 MHz 436.500 MHz 9600 ITAMSAT-OSCAR-26 (IO-26) 145.875 MHz 435.867 MHz 1200/9600 145.900 MHz 435.822 MHz 145.925 MHz 145.950 MHz AMRAD-OSCAR-27 (AO-27) 145.850 MHz 436.800 MHz 300-9600 POSAT-1 145.925 MHz 435.250 MHz 9600 145.975 MHz 435.275 MHz /EX SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-275.02 MORE INFO ABOUT AMRAD-OSCAR-27 HR AMSAT NEWS SERVICE BULLETIN 275.02 FROM AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD OCTOBER 1, 1993 TO ALL RADIO AMATEURS BT BID: $ANS-275.02 AMRAD Announces the Launch of AMRAD-OSCAR-27 (AO-27) The Amateur Radio Research And Development Corporation (AMRAD) of McLean Virginia is proud to announce the launch and activation of a new Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio (OSCAR) named AMRAD-OSCAR-27 (AO-27). Launch occurred at 01:45:00 UTC Sunday, 26-SEP-93 aboard the Ariane V-59 mission from the Guyana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. AO-27 was inserted into its orbit approximately 24 minutes later as one of seven satellites launched on this mission. AO-27 was activated on the next orbit as it passed over the command station near Washington, D.C., and was heard by AMRAD members throughout the area. AO-27 is a secondary amateur communications payload carried aboard the EYESAT-1 commercial MICROSAT satellite built by Interferometrics Inc. of Vienna, Virginia. The amateur equipment aboard the satellite was con- structed by members of AMRAD, a technically-oriented, non-profit org- anization of radio amateurs based in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., to meet the needs of amateurs for a platform to conduct digital satellite communications experiments. The payload is presently trans- mitting at 1200 bps AFSK on a frequency of 436.800 MHz on a part-time schedule during the on-orbit checkout and commissioning of the parent EYESAT-1 satellite. AMRAD members will be preparing information for future release on receiving and decoding telemetry from the payload and on the progress of their experiments. AMRAD congratulates the KITSAT and ITAMSAT teams and the University of Surrey on the launch and activation of their satellites. AMRAD thanks AMSAT-NA for the technical support and encouragement they provided during construction and preparation of the AMRAD OSCAR payload. For further information about AMRAD and the AMRAD OSCAR-27 payload, please contact AMRAD at PO Drawer 6148, McLean Virginia, USA, 22106-6148, or call the AMRAD BBS in McLean, Virginia, at (703) 734-1387. /EX SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-275.06 ANS LANDLINE BBS HR AMSAT NEWS SERVICE BULLETIN 275.06 FROM AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD OCTOBER 1, 1993 TO ALL RADIO AMATEURS BT BID: $ANS-275.06 Some Landline BBSs That Carry AMSAT News Service (ANS) Bulletins & KEPS CompuServe's Hamnet Sysop: Scott Loftness (W3VS) <760703.407@CompuServe.COM> Western Pacific BBS Phone #: 415-453-2854 Up to 14,400bps V.32bis Sysop: Daniel C. Dufficy (KH8AF) >INTERNET:kh8af@crl.com The ARRL BBS Phone #: 203-666-0578 Sysop: Luck Hurder (KY1T) >INTERNET:lhurder@arrl.org California Amatuer Radio Emergency Services (CARES) BBS Phone #: 916-323-4826 Sacramento, CA Sysop: Gorden Fuller (WB6OVH) >INTERNET:GFULLER@SFOVMICI.VNET.IBM.COM !!amsa@sats&stats!! bbs Phone #: 201-261-2780 New Jersy Up to 14,400bps Sysop: Mel Roman (KA2UPD) >INTERNET:70712.1050@CompuServe.COM HAM>LINKINTERNET:k0tg@amsat.org OCA/AMSAT BBS Phone #: 714-738-4331 Fullerton, CA UP to 14,400bps Sysop: John Wisniowski (N6DBF) >INTERNET:n6dbf@amsat.org or at CompuServe 70233,75 DRIG/AMSAT BBS Phone #: 214-394-7438 Dallas, TX UP to 14,400bps Sysop: Jeff Wallach (N5ITD) If you have a BBS and would like to join the AMSAT BBS Network, N6DBF would like to hear from you. I need to know the name of your BBS, Phone number, Location (city, state), Baud rate, Sysop's name and callsign, and your INTERNET and/or CompuServe address. Also, what AMSAT, ARRL, etc. files do you post each week. Contact: CompuServe at: 70233,75 Internet at: >INTERNET:n6dbf@amsat.org or at N6DBF's callbook address * Please note: The AMSAT BBS Network is a telephone (BBS) network, not a packet (PBBS) network. 73, John Wisniowski (N6DBF) AMSAT NA, BBS Coordinator /EX SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-275.07 G3IOR REPORTS ABOUT RS & MIR HR AMSAT NEWS SERVICE BULLETIN 275.07 FROM AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD OCTOBER 1, 1993 TO ALL RADIO AMATEURS BT BID: $ANS-275.07 G3IOR Provides Some Interesting News About RS-10/11, RS-12/13 & MIR The Russian RS-1 satellite, launched in October 1978 is now 15 years old, but still giving signals. It's battery went open circuit soon after launch, but the spacecraft's 29.401 MHz beacon can still be heard sending "55" when the solar cells are in full sunlight. Sadly, the power is insufficient to provide that needed to operate the Mode-A transponder. Nico Janssen (PA0DLO) recently visited the Radio Sputnik ground command station, meeting Leonid Labutin (UA3CR), his son Evgeny (RA3APR), Sergei Samburov (RV3DR), and the operators of RS3A. They passed on the following information on the satellites. For a number of technical reasons, command problems, interference and the like, the radio amateur satellite systems RS 10/11 and RS 12/13 cannot presently be switched to modes other than those now in use. Consequently for the immediate future RS-10 may be expected to continue to operate in Mode-A (2M uplink and 10M downlink) and RS-12 in Mode-K (15M uplink and 10M downlink). RS-11 and RS-13 will remain switched off and in "standby" mode. The new Russian amateur satellite system RS-15 is now complete and ready for launch. It will be built into another Cosmos navigation satellite, similar to the navigation satellite Cosmos-2123 that houses RS-12/13. It is not known exactly when the launch of the satellite will occur, but as soon as an older satellite in this series of navigation satellites reaches the end of its operational life, the new satellite, with RS-15, will be launched. There are now no plans for any further RS satellites after RS-15, and only project that the RS team is involved in is the voice experiment satellite VOXSAT. In this project the Russian team will work together with AMSAT-LU to build this amateur satellite system also to be built into a Russian satellite. News on MIR The present crew members of MIR, Vasily Tsibliyev and Aleksander Serebrov do not have personal amateur radio licenses, thus they do not have their own call signs while manning MIR. However, they do have permission to use the amateur radio station in MIR, using the general MIR call sign R0MIR for speech and R0MIR-1 for the onboard packet radio Personal Message System (PMS). Since all Russian cosmonauts will now be given amateur radio training by Sergei (RV3DR) as a fixed part of their cosmonaut training, we may confidently expect the amateur radio station in MIR to be active con- tinuously as long as cosmonauts are on board the space station. Future trained cosmonauts include Valeri Poliakov (U3MIR), Viktor Afanasyev (U9MIR) and Yuri Usachov (R3MIR). Sergei (RV3DR) is only involved in training the Russian cosmonauts, so he recommends that western amateur radio organizations take care of the amateur radio training of the coming visiting cosmonauts preparing for a stay in MIR. Also, to make the amateur radio activity of a western cosmonaut in MIR as effective as possible Sergei suggests to have the cosmonaut carry out a specific amateur experiment or take some new equipment to MIR, such as the microphone with voice memory taken by the German cosmonaut Flade. Plans are afoot to change MIR's amateur radio equipment. In the future not only 2M but also 70cm and even 23cm operation can be expected. ATV equipment for use aboard the space station is presently being developed in Germany. 73, Pat, G3IOR @ GB7VLS /EX