Enjoy BACAR next Saturday

Bacar will be launched from a private airfield near Hartbeespoort, South Africa, between 08:00 and 08:15 on Saturday 8 August.

The payload includes an APRS system operating on 144,800 MHz, which will be switched on two minutes before the launch and allow APRS stations to follow the flight of BACAR. The call sign of the APRS beacon is ZS6SAT.

A VHF beacon on 144,825 MHz will be operating every two minutes for the first 30 minutes of the flight on voice, MCW and CW, for the following 119 minutes every five minutes, and then revert to every two minutes.

A 40 metre beacon will be operating on 7 022 kHz with telemetry information every one minute. The information includes the inside and outside temperatures and the pressure in millibar. Visit www.amsatsa.org.za for more information on the flight.

Radio Amateurs submitting a telemetry line of the 40 metre transmission together with details of their location will be awarded a BACAR certificate of participation. Telemetry details must be sent to bacar@sarl.org.za on the day of the launch.

Ground control will be situated at the SARL National Amateur Radio Centre where the flight can be followed on a video display.

If you are not planning to track BACAR yourself, you are invited to visit the NARC and participate in the activity from there. Learners will be invited to visit the centre and participate in various tracking and telemetry experiments.

The NARC will be operational from 07:00. Launch coverage will be on 145,750 in Gauteng and on HF on 7 082 kHz from 07:45.

The South African Radio League