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www.southgatearc.org
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Amateur Radio hi-tech developments in the newsThe Amateur Radio Satellite organisation AMSAT has been doing pioneering work in the use of SuperCap technology. In an article 'Get the Lowdown on UltraCapacitors' Electronic Design magazine reports on Radio Amateurs' work in this field. On the AMSAT Bulletin Board (AMSAT-BB) Tom Clark, K3IO writes: Many of you have heard that Lew McFadin (W5DID), working with Steve Bible (N7HPR) and Steve's colleagues (especially Keith Curtis) at Microchip (the PIC people) have been working on a next generation power conditioning system. The basic idea is to have a power charge/discharge conditioner for each cell of the spacecraft's battery pack. This will allow the use of several different battery technologies (NiCd, NiMH, LiIon, etc) and also some of the new "super capacitors". Some of you who were at Dayton may have seen the breadboard mockup of system that Steve brought and Lew was showing. Lew was also showing some ~2000 Farad(!) 3 volt capacitors (some of us dubbed them "flux gate capacitors"). The SuperCap developments have been exploding of late. One immediate service is for regenerative braking in hybrid and electric vehicles, since the capacitors seem to be able to withstand a (virtually) infinite number of charge/discharge cycles, and then can "soak up" & discharge huge currents -- must faster than any chemical batteries can do. Batteries store watt-hours of energy, while capacitors handle large numbers of watts of power. One German light-rail system employs a total of 600 2600Farad capacitors for regenerative braking. Some US electric buses have capacitor banks with 144 18Farad capacitors that deliver 400 Amps at 360 Volts. Today I received the 11.15.07 edition of Electronic Design magazine,
and there is an interesting technology review paper entitled "Get
the Lowdown on UltraCapacitors" starting on page 45; the article
is available online at Starting on page 50 (the 3rd page of the online version) The "Microchip worked with AMSAT-NA, the not-for-profit private organization
that develops amateur-radio satellites. AMSAT’s next big project,
the Eagle satellite, is slated for launch in March 2009. To make Eagle
function for decades, it will have a power system based on this work that
combines solar AMSAT-NA AMSAT-UK Join the AMSAT Bulletin Board at
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