Fox

Fox-1Cliff Ready for Launch

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On Monday, September 24th, Jerry Buxton, NØJY, AMSAT Vice-President Engineering, delivered and performed the integration of AMSAT’s Fox-1Cliff CubeSat in preparation for launch.

Fox-1Cliff in the clean room, ready for prep

Unlike AO-85 and AO-91, AMSAT purchased a commercial launch for Fox-1Cliff. Please consider a donation to help replenish the coffers for GOLF and other future AMSAT projects!
https://www.amsat.org/product-category/amsat-general-donations/
https://www.amsat.org/product-category/amsat-membership/
https://www.amsat.org/product-category/amsat-presidents-club-donations/

Uplink:      435.300 MHz FM voice (67.0 Hz CTCSS tone) / 1267.300 MHz FM voice (67.0 Hz CTCSS tone)
Downlink:  145.920 MHz FM voice; AFSK digital data up to 9600 bps
Transmit power: 600 mW nominal

Fox-1Cliff after insertion in the PSL-P deployer

Because only one uplink frequency can be active at a time, the use of the Mode-L uplink will be limited to experimental periods announced in advance.

Fox-1Cliff carries the flight spare of the AO-85 Vanderbilt University Low Energy Proton (LEP) radiation experiment, and the standard Fox-1 Penn State University–Erie gyroscope experiment. Virginia Tech provided a VGA camera which is the same as AO-92 but will provide images at a higher 640 x 480 resolution. These non-SSTV images will be decoded in the FoxTelem software.

Spaceflight Mission Managers and the two CubeSat teams performing integration

Fox-1Cliff, unlike the other three Fox-1 FM spacecraft, does not have an active AFC on the uplinks.

Fox-1Cliff’s Subaudible Telemetry (low-speed telemetry) will be the same as for AO-85, AO-91, and AO-92. It will be supported by the same FoxTelem software already released.

As with AO-92, a high-speed mode will be used to support the Virginia Tech VGA camera experiment.

The Fox-1Cliff Remove Before Flight Pin after its final removal for the mission.

This mode will be active for 40 minutes by ground command before reverting to standard U/v transponder voice operation.

Fox-1Cliff is named in honor of long-time AMSAT member, contributor, and benefactor Cliff Buttschardt, K7RR (SK), who passed away in 2016. Cliff’s contributions to AMSAT and other amateur satellite programs, including serving as an adviser during the initial development of the CubeSat specification at California Polytechnic State University, earned him the Lifetime Achievement Award from Project OSCAR in 2006.

[ANS thanks Jerry Buxton, NØJY, AMSAT Vice-President Engineering for the above information]

 

Spaceflight team along with some team members of the other CubeSats that were integrated Monday

 

 

Videos of RadFxSat-2 (Fox-1E) Flight Model Testing

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AMSAT Vice President Engineering Jerry Buxton, N0JY, has been streaming live videos of testing of the flight model of RadFxSat-2 (Fox-1E) from Fox Labs in Granbury, TX.

You can view archived videos at https://www.twitch.tv/n0jy/videos/all.

Follow @N0JY on Twitter for announcements of future live streams of RadFxSat-2 flight model testing. You can also follow N0JY on Twitch for notifications of live streams.

RadFxSat-2 is scheduled to launch later this year on the ELaNa XX mission aboard Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne air-launch-to-orbit system. The satellite carries a 30 kHz wide V/u linear transponder and radiation experiments for Vanderbilt University’s Institute for Space and Defense Electronics.

RadFxSat-2 / Fox-1E Flight Model Arrives at Fox Labs for Testing

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On March 31st, the RadFxSat-2 / Fox-1E flight model arrived at Fox Labs in Granbury, TX where it will undergo testing prior to launch later this year on the ELaNa XX mission aboard Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne air-launch-to-orbit system. RadFxSat-2 carries a 30 kHz wide V/u linear transponder and radiation experiments for Vanderbilt University’s Institute for Space and Defense Electronics.

 

RadFxSat-2 / Fox-1E in its Pelican case.

AMSAT Vice-President Engineering Jerry Buxton, N0JY, posted the following video showing off the flight model of RadFxSat-2 / Fox-1E for the first time.

FoxTelem Version 1.06 Released

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​I am releasing version 1.06 of FoxTelem today.  This release addresses several defects and instabilities in FoxTelem 1.05 and earlier.  It also introduces a new Earth Plot that allows any telemetry value to be plotted as a heat map against a map of the earth.  For more details about the Earth Plot and some example plots, you can read a quick tutorial that I have written here:
http://www.g0kla.com/workbench/2018-01-26.php

As always, let me know if you see any issues or log them on Github at https://github.com/ac2cz/FoxTelem/issues

KEY CHANGES
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* EARTH PLOTS allow you to plot any telemetry value as a heat map on a map of the earth
* Allow graphs and telemetry results to be searched with UTC dates and for ranges of uptime/dates
* Allow stepping through the telemetry with up/down arrows
* Prevent hang when decoder starts if FCD returns an error
* Fixed bug where TLEs were not updated in the name is changed in the spacecraft settings window
* Fixed crashes introduced in 1.05 release
* Display all HERCI High Speed payloads when Raw Byte Payloads shown.
* Fix bug where missing TLE disables spacecraft from being tracked at all
* Fixes bug where DDE connection to SatPC32 fails with European decimal point format
* Add MPPT calibration values for Fox-1D
* Improved the RF signal measurements
* Improved the Find Signal algorithm
* Space graph labels more evenly
* Put the spacecraft tabs in FoxId order

And many other bug fixes. Full list of changes here:
https://github.com/ac2cz/FoxTelem/milestone/3?closed=1

You can download the latest version of the program from:

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