Arissat-1 My Experience

I remember the launch of Arissat-1 well, like a proper geek, I’d connected my laptop into the television in the lounge and had Nasa TV playing full screen and I sat glued to the screen all day watching as they moved the satellite out, noting how much of a beating it seem to take. Then noticing along with everyone else that the 70cms antenna was missing and they delayed the launch to investigate, even though no outcome arrived they still launched later in the afternoon.

After getting the first SSTV image over the UK at 3am on the 4th of August, I was hooked and most passes listened and accessed the transponder when it was in sunlight, my first QSO was with Gavin (M1BXF) on the 22nd of August 2011, this was a pre-arranged and we both noted how good the signals where even for a short antenna on the satellite.

I then had further success having QSOs with DG0ER, GW1FKY, LA1BNA, IW4BIF, DG1EA, PD0RKC, what I did notice was how quiet the transponder was which gave me the impression lots of people didn’t bother trying it, but the day before it de-orbited I was able to speak to Ken GW1FKY on 3rd January 2012 at 15:20 I think this might have been at least the last QSO from the UK via the satellite.

Not only was there the transponder, voice and SSTV beacons but telemetry which could be decoded using the freely available software. I didn’t spend too much time getting this data but successfully decoded lots of packets using the IC-910 and the Funcube Dongle.

Overall a successful mission it looks like lots of hams listened to the beacons available and decoded lots of images, I just hope it’s the first of many satellites kicked out of the ISS!

RSGB AFS CW & SSB Contests

During the last two weekends it’s been the RSGB Affiliated Societies Contests 2012, 80m CW and SSB at first I wasn’t really setting out to take part, just considered giving away some points to those giving it a serious bash, but even so was easy to make a good amount of QSOs in an afternoon.

The first leg was CW, I will admit I know very little CW, I can make out my callsign and 59 but that really is my limit so I setup MixW and CW Skimmer to act as my ears, which like normal worked perfectly. After 5 QSOs, I got into the flow of things and started working my way up the CW portion of the band, within two hours I managed to work 58 QSOs. Conditions seemed reasonable and every station I called came back.

The QSO amount was also an improvement over 2011 where I’d worked 43 stations using a 80m Quarter Wave Inverted L so least I managed to increase the total for this year slightly.

This weekend saw the SSB leg of the contest, at dead on 14:00 I worked Rob (M0VFC) operating G3PYE and then started to work my way back down the band. Which worked well slowly getting more contacts in the log, there was the usual QRM from stations splattering each other but even so there was only two stations who I didn’t manage to work, this might be due to conditions, QRM or my antenna not being that great even so the half size G5RV with 80m traps worked well.

I wasn’t worried after two hours S&P, I’d put 60 QSOs in the logbook and called it a day. What I did learn was that I needed to sort out keying the FT950’s DVK within Win-Test so I’ll be sorting some LUA scripts out in due course as it will be handy for other contests as well.

Overall very enjoyable two weekends, now need to look at what other contests I want to take part in this year.