CY9C DXpedition Active On Satellite

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After a delay due to weather and equipment difficulties, the CY9C DXpedition to St. Paul Island is now active on satellite. On a pass of FO-29 during the 02:00 UTC hour on August 25, 2016, they made the first satellite QSO from St. Paul Island in over 18 years, working Peter Goodhall, 2E0SQL, in England. David Webb, KB1PVH, in Massachusetts was also logged on that pass. On the next FO-29 pass, numerous stations across North America from Massachusetts and Ontario to Florida, Oklahoma, and Texas were logged. Audio from that pass, recorded by Paul Stoetzer, N8HM, in Washington, DC, can be heard here: CY9C on FO-29 0424Z 25-Aug-2016

Stations in range of St. Paul Island are encouraged to work them. Please see @WW2DX on Twitter for updates from the DXpedition site. The DXpedition is scheduled to end on August 29th.

CY9C's M2 LEO Pack seen at sunrise on the morning of August 25, 2016 on St. Paul Island. Photo credit VA3QR
CY9C’s M2 LEO Pack seen at sunrise on the morning of August 25, 2016 on St. Paul Island. Photo credit VA3QR

 

RadFxSat-2 (Fox-1E) Launch Scheduled for December 2017

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AMSAT has been informed that the launch for the NASA Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) XX mission carrying RadFxSat-2 (Fox-1E) has been scheduled for December 2017.

In addition to RadFxSat-2, the ELaNa XX mission will carry 12 CubeSats constructed both by NASA and several universities around the United States. The mission will be launched by Virgin Galactic on their LauncherOne air launch to orbit system from Mojave, CA

RadFxSat-2, like RadFxSat (Fox-1B), is a partnership opportunity between the Vanderbilt University Institute for Space and Defense Electronics and AMSAT and will carry a similar radiation effects experiment, studying new FinFET technology.

RadFxSat-2 will be the fifth Fox-1 satellite built by AMSAT. Fox-1A, now AMSAT-OSCAR 85 (AO-85), was launched on October 8, 2015 and is fully operational, providing science data from it’s onboard experiments and FM transponder service for the amateur radio community. Fox-1Cliff and Fox-1D are scheduled for launch this fall and RadFxSat is scheduled to launch in early 2017.

The RadFxSat-2 spacecraft bus will be built on the Fox-1 series but will feature a linear transponder “upgrade” to replace the standard FM transponder in Fox-1A through D. In addition, the uplink and downlink bands will be reversed from the previous Fox satellites in a Mode V/u (J) configuration using a 2 meter uplink and 70 cm downlink. The downlink will feature a 1200 bps BPSK telemetry channel to carry the Vanderbilt science data in addition to a 30 kHz wide transponder for amateur radio use.

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RadFxSat “Tour” on YouTube

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Vice President Engineering Jerry Buxton, N0JY, gave a live “tour” of the RadFxSat CubeSat on August 20 from Fox Labs, describing various aspects of the flight model, construction, and testing.

The video playback is available on YouTube.

YX0V DXpedition to Aves Island to Include Satellite Operations

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UPDATE: The DXpedition has been postponed by the Venezuelan Navy. Check back for further updates.

The YX0V DXpedition to Aves Island, scheduled for August 31, 2016 – September 10, 2016, will include satellite operations. Aves Island, a dependency of Venezuela located west of Dominica and Guadeloupe in the Caribbean Sea (grid FK85eq), is currently the 17th most wanted DXCC entity on the Club Log DXCC Most-Wanted List and was last on the air in 2007. It was active on satellite during the YV0D expedition in 2004, but only three QSOs were made before the DXpedition was cut short due to rain.

Satellite plans are yet to be finalized. Please check back for further details. YX0V information can be found on their website at http://yx0v.com/, on Twitter at https://twitter.com/yx0v2016, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/yx0v2016/

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