Amateur radio satellite resumes operation

After a software crash on September 26 aboard the amateur radio satellite AO-51 which took it off the air, Ground Station Mark Hammond, N8MH reported that as of September 29, 'The reloading of AO-51 is essentially complete; the bird is in good order.'

The AO-51 Command Team configured the satellite for simultaneous operation of both the S-band and U-band transmitters. The tradeoff is that U-band will be low in power-around 250 mW or so. Also, please notice the use of the 145.880 MHz uplink!

September 29
FM Repeater, V/S-U
Uplink: 145.880 MHz FM (no PL tone)
Downlinks: 2401.200 MHz FM *and* 435.300 MHz FM (at low power!)

Mark said, "This is a great time to work on improving the sensitivity of your receiver setups! The 250 mW will challenge some of you for sure. PLEASE be sure to follow the "if you can't hear it, don't try to uplink" basic rule of satellite operation."

If the satellite supports the dual downlink mode OK, controllers may extend the V/S-U mode a few days past the original mode schedule in order to give mode S operators a fair shake at some operations and testing--while at the same time allowing some low power mode V/U
operations.

Check the Command Team and Operations Group AO-51 News web page for the latest September 2010 AO-51 Schedule:
http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/echo/CTNews.php

Mark Hammond N8MH

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