AMSAT News

AMSAT Board of Directors 2021 Election Results

by

With the election period now ended for the 2021 AMSAT Board of Directors I am pleased to announce that the following members have been duly elected to serve a two-year term on the Board:

  • Joseph Armbruster, KJ4JIO
  • Robert Bankston, KE4AL
  • Jerry Buxton, N0JY
  • Zach Metzinger, N0ZGO

These join the existing Board members who have a year left in their current terms.

I present to you the new AMSAT Board of Directors:

  • Mark Hammond, N8MH
  • Bruce Paige, KK5DO
  • Paul Stoetzer, N8HM
  • Joseph Armbruster, KJ4JIO
  • Robert Bankston, KE4AL
  • Jerry Buxton, N0JY
  • Zach Metzinger, N0ZGO

Congratulations to the new Board of Directors and sincere thanks to each for stepping up to lead the organization into the future of amateur radio in space!

73,

Jeff Davis KE9V
Secretary
Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT)

AO-109 (RadFxSat-2/AMSAT Fox-1E) Open For Amateur Use

by

The AMSAT Engineering and Operations Teams are pleased to announce that AO-109 (RadFxSat-2/AMSAT Fox-1E) is now open for amateur use. Users are advised to use efficient modes such as CW or FT4 for making contacts, since issues with the satellite make SSB voice contacts challenging at best.

Please see the May/June 2021 issue (Vol. 44, No. 3) of The AMSAT Journal for an article by Burns Fisher, WB1FJ, and Mark Hammond, N8MH, detailing the various attempts to characterize AO-109 and its apparent problems.

On behalf of the Engineering and Operations Teams–

73,
Jerry, N0JY and Drew, KO4MA

AO-109 Frequencies
Inverting Linear Transponder
Uplink 145.860 MHz – 145.890 MHz
Downlink 435.760 MHz – 435.790 MHz
1k2 BPSK Telemetry 435.750 MHz (non-operational)

[ANS thanks AMSAT Vice President – Engineering Jerry Buxton, N0JY, and AMSAT Vice President – Operations Drew Glasbrenner, KO4MA, for the above information]

AMSAT CubeSatSim First Official Release – v1.0

by

I am very pleased to announce the first software release of the CubeSatSim software v1.0!  Along with the first hardware release v1.0 last month, this is an important milestone for this AMSAT educational project.

All the CubeSatSim software and hardware is fully open source.  The v1.0 release info is available on GitHub and the v1.0 hardware info including Gerber files is available here.

Thanks to Bruce Paige, KK5DO, we have CubeSatSim blank PCB sets and CubeSatSim Raspberry Pi SD cards available on the AMSAT Store. For the moment, they are only available to ship to US addresses. In a post-COVID future, we hope to offer worldwide shipping.

The CubeSatSim Raspberry Pi SD Card  is a 16 GB micro SD card with Raspberry Pi OS Lite and all the CubeSatSim software installed and configured on it.  It is available at the AMSAT Store for $20.  You can also download the image and flash it to your own SD card using these instructions. Here is the readme file for the CubeSatSim software.

With the 3 board sets of blank PCBs, you can order the parts and solder your own CubeSatSim. They are available at the AMSAT Store for $35.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the team that has been working on the CubeSatSim Project including Pat Kilory, N8PK, Jim McLaughlin, KI6ZUM, and David White, WD6DRI.  In addition, Chris Thompson, G0KLA/AC2CZ has been instrumental in helping me get the FSK/BPSK transmit code working and has added support for the CubeSatSim to FoxTelem. Yesterday’s release of FoxTelem v1.11 has full CubeSatSim support.

And of course, thank you to the AMSAT Board of Directors and the AMSAT membership who have supported this project for many years.

73,

Alan
KU2Y
AMSAT Vice President for Educational Relations

P.S. AMSAT has CubeSatSim Loaners available to ship to your event or presentation or STEM outreach activity – just contact me if you have an upcoming event.