From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npoiv!alice!mhtsa!eagle!karn Newsgroups: net.ham-radio Title: RS Satellite News Article-I.D.: eagle.767 Posted: Mon Feb 7 23:31:05 1983 Received: Wed Feb 9 05:44:24 1983 The following is courtesy of K1HTV, VP Operations for AMSAT: Here are some notes on some of the presently operating Radio Amateur satellites. The RS5 telemetry beacon (29.452 MHz) was heard today (Feb 7) in the dwell mode, sending a series of either "E01" or "EG01". This is normally the battery voltage telem. channel and a reading of 01 translates to a dead battery. The RS-5 satellte however is far from dead and seems to be operating properly, even in darkness so the meaning of the 01 raw data on channel "E" and "EG" is unclear. Maybe it has something to do with the codestore message mentioned later in this text. Although the R5-5 transponder has been comanded off, three channels have been operational, the 29.452 MHz telem. beacon, the 29.350 MHz service channel which retransmits CW on 145.850 MHz, and the ROBOT-Codestore channel on 29.330 MHz. This latter channel is presently being used by a Soviet Antarctic expedition whose communications group is headed by Leo Labutin, 4K1CR (UA3CR), whose picture recently appeared in ASR #50. Because of the unreliable HF propagation between the Antarctic and the U.S.S.R. , the expedition is using the store and forward (codestore) capability of RS-5 to exchange messages between the Soviet Antarctic base(s) and Moscow. On Monday, February 7th the following message was copied around 21:30 UTC from the RS-5 beacon on 29.330 MHz. "UA3AJH UW3CX SRO(OE)NO [OE sent as one letter sounds like cheh] DAJTE SEANSY KOSPASA QTH NEOBHODIMO OTMETITX KARTE ULETAM 10 FEW DE 4K1CR 4VUV ". Aquick call to Dex Anderson, W4KM, provided the following translation of the above Russian message to English. It says UA3AJH UW3CX (in Moscow), URGENTLY GIVE (us) PASSES (orbital info) on KOSPASA . It is NECESSARY TO NOTE the QTH ON MAP. FLY OUT on FEB 10 . FROM 4K1CR (call sign of Leo, UA3CR). The KOSPASA mentioned in the above message refers to the Soviet KOSPAS search and rescue satellite which was launched on June 30, 1982 as part of a joint international effort by the United States, the U.S.S.R., France and Canada. KOSPAS and SARSAT satellites are to be used to locate downed civil aircraft and ships. The first rescue mission occured on Sept.10, 1982 when a downed Canadian plane was found using the Soviet KOSPAS satellite. >From the message one can speculate that the reason for the Antarctic expedition wanting the orbital data for the KOSPAS satellite is that they are going to do some transmitting on one of the ELT (Emergency Locating Transmitter) frequencies to test the bird. The results should indicate on the map just where on the Antarctic continent the Soviet base is located. The last part of Leo's message mentions TO FLY OUT FEB 10. It is not clear if he means that they will be flying out of their present are to another base or if they will be leaving the Antarctic continent. Switching to other Soviet birds, RS-6 and RS-8 have had their transponders on lately and have been in favorable positions at times for a number of long haul DX contacts between eastern Europe and the U.S. east coast. In the past week, EQXs were around 30 degrees West longitude and occured about 21:00 UTC. Yours truly, K1HTV, located 12 miles NE of Washington, DC worked YO2IS in Rumania on three different passes as well as a number of Czech stations. Earlier in one of those passes, TU2IE in the Ivory Coast was worked. For those who still need Asia to complete Satellite WAC and don't mind waking up in the middle of the night for an hour or so might I recommend a try with UA0BBN. Mike is on especially on weekends, where he goes begging for contacts at times. He often calls people who call CQ and likes to operate about 20KHz up from the low end of the RS6 & RS8 satellites' passbands . On Feb. 6th UA0BBN and K1HTV worked on 6 different passes of RS6,7 & 8. The QSO via RS7 was via the 145.850 / 29.350 MHz service channel. On 6 Feb> RS7 was copied dumping a list of stations that had made contact with its onboard ROBOT . Of the 50 call signs dumped, there were stations from all continents except Africa, (but ROBOT did work two stations in Antarctica). I wonder how long it will be before ROBOT gets DXCC. Reports continue to come in indicating that RS1 and RS2 are both semi-operational. The 29.4 MHz beacon of RS1 can be heard when the bird is in sunlight. The telemetry it sends is not valid and the satellite identifies itself as "55". In fact all letters in the RS1 telemetry are sent as the numeral "5". A recent report from Europe indicates that RS2 is also active at times, with its transponder occasionally on (and very sensitive) but its 29.4 MHz beacon off. The last report of the RS2 beacon being copied was from W6ELT who in mid January, heard both RS1 with its NG telemetry and RS2 with its good telemetry and its RS RS identifier which indicated that its transponder was ON. Both birds were heard by George within the same hour, about 30 minutes apart between the hours of 5:45 and 6:30 AM PST before local sunrise. So with RS1-8 and U-O-9 it looks like we presently have a total of 9 active ( or sem- active) Radio Amateur satellites in orbit. 73 de Rich, K1HTV