- Macdoppler 2 26 – Satellite And Station Tracking System Tracking
- Macdoppler 2 26 – Satellite And Station Tracking System Diagram
Automatic Tracking System for Amateur Satellite, DIY ROTOR (AZ-EL) build using Arrow Antenna. Space Station Crew Uses HAM Radio to Call Earth - Duration: 20:28. MacDoppler is used around the world by Amateur Radio operators, satellite spotters, educators and commercial customers from CBS News to the International Space Station Amateur Radio Hardware Management program, Delta Telemetry Tracking and Control at Integrated Defence Systems, Florida State University and the CalPoly CubeSat Project.
- Three mysterious payloads widely believed to be signals intelligence satellites for the Chinese military rocketed into orbit on top of a Long March 2C booster Monday from a launch base in southwestern China. The three Yaogan 30-type satellites lifted off aboard the Long March 2C rocket at 11:19 a.m. EDT (1519 GMT) Monday from the Xichang space center in the Sichuan province of southwestern China. Liftoff occurred at 11:19 p.m. Beijing time, according to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency. More(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 27)
ABOUT 3% OF STARLINK SATELLITES HAVE FAILED SO FAR - SpaceX has drawn plenty of praise and criticism with the creation of Starlink, a constellation that will one day provide broadband internet access to the entire world. To date, the company has launched over 800 satellites and (as of this summer) is producing them at a rate of about 120 a month. There are even plans to have a constellation of 42,000 satellites in orbit before the decade is out. More
(Source: Phys.org - Oct 27)
SPACEX JUST LAUNCHED ITS 100TH SUCCESSFUL FALCON ROCKET FLIGHT. YES, THERE'S A VIDEO. - SpaceX just launched its 100th successful mission, and the company put together an action-packed video to mark the milestone. SpaceX hit the century mark on Saturday (Oct. 24) with the liftoff of a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket carrying 60 of the company's Starlink broadband satellites to orbit. That same day, SpaceX tweeted out a video documenting all 100 successful launches, starting with a September 2008 flight of a Falcon 1 booster. More
(Source: Space.com - Oct 27)
RUSSIA LAUNCHES SOYUZ WITH NEXT-GENERATION NAVIGATION SATELLITE - Russia launched a next-generation navigation satellite to join its GLONASS constellation Sunday. Liftoff of the Uragan-K No.15L satellite, aboard a Soyuz 2-1b/Fregat rocket, took place at 23:08:42 Moscow Time (19:08:42 UTC) from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the northwest of the country. Spacecraft separation is expected to occur a little over three and a half hours after launch. More
(Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Oct 26)
THE FIRST SATELLITE WITH AI ONBOARD IS NOW IN ORBIT, AND ITS TECH COULD COMPLETELY CHANGE HOW WE RESPOND TO WILDFIRES - On September 2, a satellite the size of a cereal box took off for space. Names PhiSat-1, its mission was to monitor polar ice and soil moisture, making it — at least superficially — a fairly unglamorous piece of kit. But for the satellite's creators — the European Space Agency (ESA), chip giant Intel, and Irish robotics company Ubotica — this launch represented months of work, and had been postponed by a failed rocket launch, two natural disasters, and a global pandemic. More
(Source: Business Insider - Oct 26)
SPACEX ADDS ANOTHER 60 SATELLITES TO STARLINK NETWORK - SpaceX successfully deployed 60 more Starlink internet satellites in orbit Saturday, continuing a record launch cadence while engineers assess a concern with Falcon 9 rocket engines that has delayed other missions, including the next crew flight to the International Space Station. The 60 Starlink satellites blasted off from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 11:31:34 a.m. EDT (1531:34 GMT) Saturday. The mission was delayed from Thursday to allow time for engineers to assess a problem with a camera on the Falcon 9 rocket’s upper stage. More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 25)
US ASTRONAUT VOTES EARLY FROM SPACE STATION - ASA astronaut Kate Rubins shared her voting selfie from orbit after stating before her launch earlier this month that she would cast her ballot from the International Space Station. Since 1997, as a concession to the fact that most NASA astronauts live near the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas has had an extreme absentee ballot procedure in place for anyone who finds themselves off Earth on Election Day. More
(Source: Space.com - Oct 24)
SPACEX SCRUBS 15TH STARLINK MISSION - Just four days after the previous flight, SpaceX was ready to launch its third batch of Starlink satellites this month into orbit at 12:14 EDT (16:14 UTC) on Thursday, 22 October. However, an issue 13 minutes before liftoff forced a hold and scrub for the day. The v1.0 L14 mission — the 14th launch of operational satellites and 15th Starlink flight overall — will launch from pad SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. More
(Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Oct 22)
SOYUZ BRINGS THREE SPACE STATION FLIERS BACK TO EARTH - One week after two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut arrived at the International Space Station, the three crew members they’re replacing strapped into their own Soyuz spacecraft, undocked and returned to Earth Wednesday with a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan to close out a 196-day mission. Descending under a huge orange-and-white parachute, the Soyuz crew module touched down at 10:54 p.m. EDT (8:54 a.m. Thursday local time), three-and-a-half hours after departing the lab complex. More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 22)
SPACEX IS WORKING WITH MICROSOFT TO BUILD A SATELLITE NETWORK THAT CAN DETECT THE LAUNCH OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS - paceX has tapped Azure, a massive cloud-computing service built by Microsoft, to help it develop and operate experimental satellites capable of detecting missile launches all over the world. Microsoft revealed its partnership with SpaceX on Tuesday as part of its larger announcement of new modular datacenters, or shipping-container-like platforms crammed with cloud-computing resources that can be deployed to remote areas of the world. More
(Source: Business Insider - Oct 22)
COMPANY ADVANCES PLAN FOR PRIVATE CITIZEN FLIGHT TO SPACE STATION - Houston-based Axiom Space is negotiating final details of a contract with NASA to fly a private citizen to the International Space Station in 2021. The company's CEO, Michael Suffredini, said the mission is fully funded, and not by governments. 'We're just about done with our contract with NASA, so we expect that to be complete here in the next two to three weeks,' Suffredini said last week during an online panel discussion sponsored by International Astronautical Congress. More
(Source: UPI.com - Oct 21)
SPACE-STATION CREW MEMBERS JUST FOUND AN ELUSIVE AIR LEAK BY WATCHING TEA LEAVES FLOAT IN MICROGRAVITY - The International Space Station has been leaking an unusual amount of air since September 2019. At first, crew members held off on troubleshooting the issue, since the leak wasn't major. But in August, the leak rate increased, prompting astronauts and cosmonauts on board the orbiting laboratory to start trying to locate its source in earnest. More
(Source: Business Insider - Oct 20)
LEOLABS INDICATES NO COLLISION OF SOVIET SATELLITE AND CHINESE ROCKET STAGE - Most of the aerospace world watched the skies over Antarctica and New Zealand for portions of Thursday night/Friday morning. Earlier this week, LeoLabs Inc, a company that tracks objects in Low Earth Orbit, issued a statement regarding two large objects which posed a “high risk” of collision at 00:56:40 UTC on 16 October 2020 (8:56:40 pm EDT on 15 October). Roughly one hour after the time of possible collision, LeoLabs confirmed “No indication of collision” via a statement on Twitter. More
(Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Oct 18)
SPACEX LAUNCHES ANOTHER BATCH OF STARLINK SATELLITES - SpaceX launched 60 more Starlink internet relay platforms into orbit Sunday as the company ramps up network testing in Washington state and touts a streak of nearly 300 satellites launched since June without a spacecraft failure. Nine Merlin 1D engines fired up and powered the Falcon 9 rocket off pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 8:25:57 a.m. EDT (1225:57 GMT) Sunday, marking the 14th Falcon 9 mission dedicated to deploying satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network. More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 18)
COSMONAUTS PATCH SMALL AIR LEAK ON INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION: REPORTS - Cosmonauts are making progress in the fight against the small air leak that has beleaguered the International Space Station for months, according to Russian reports. The leak was first detected in September 2019 but was too low a priority for NASA and Roscosmos to address until August of this year given the short staffing and high activity rates at the orbiting laboratory, according to a previous statement from the U.S. space agency. More
(Source: Space.com - Oct 17)
TWO OLD SPACECRAFT JUST AVOIDED CATASTROPHICALLY COLLIDING IN ORBIT - About 1000 kilometres above Earth’s surface, two old spacecraft have narrowly avoided a collision. If they had hit one another, the smash-up could have created a spray of debris that would be extremely dangerous for other satellites and could set off a chain reaction of collisions. The two objects are a Soviet Parus navigation satellite launched in 1989 and a Chinese rocket booster launched in 2009. Neither has any method of propulsion onboard, so there is no way to steer them away from one another. More
(Source: New Scientist - Oct 17)
ASTRONAUTS SET TO LAUNCH SECURITY SATELLITE FROM SPACE STATION - Spire Global is a startup that is pivoting so quickly that in the past 18 months, it’s added specialties such as weather tracking and data services to its initial work on tracking ships and aircraft from orbit. Now the company has a contract with the Australian Office of National Intelligence to experiment with commercial satellite technologies, including “machine learning” — an application of artificial intelligence that allows a system to learn and improve classification from an initial dataset. More
(Source: Forbes - Oct 17)
U.S.-EUROPEAN SEA LEVEL SATELLITE GEARS UP FOR LAUNCH - The Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich spacecraft will soon be heading into orbit to monitor the height of the ocean for nearly the entire globe. Preparations are ramping up for the Nov. 10 launch of the world's latest sea level satellite. Since arriving in a giant cargo plane at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California last month, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich has been undergoing final checks, including visual inspections, to make sure it's fit to head into orbit. More
(Source: NASA - Oct 17)
SWEDEN TO LAUNCH SATELLITES FROM SPACE CENTER INSIDE THE ARCTIC CIRCLE - The space center in northern Sweden is mostly known for launching sounding rockets and research balloons. Now, the Swedish Space Corporation wants to be the first location north of the Arctic Circle to provide facilities for launching satellites into orbit. 90 million kronor (€8,6 million) was this week granted by the government and comes in addition to previous investment in creating a test facility at Esrange. More
(Source: The Independent Barents Observer - Oct 16)
SPACEX TO LAUNCH SATELLITE TRACKING RISING SEA LEVELS - A new payload that Elon Musk’s SpaceX will deliver into orbit next month will play a pivotal role in measuring sea level increases, potentially helping to spare economies from billions of euros in damages by the end of this century. The Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite lifts off Nov. 10 aboard a Falcon 9 rocket that will be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Its mission will be to track how the accelerating rise of sea levels are changing coastlines, threatening the habitat of more than a third of the world’s population. The European Space Agency will provide details about the mission on Friday at 4 p.m. in Paris. More
(Source: BloombergQuint - Oct 16)
If you haven’t tried satellite operations, I heartily encourage you to check out this amazing yet easily accessed segment of our amateur radio hobby.
Ham Radio Satellites in Orbit
Macdoppler 2 26 – Satellite And Station Tracking System Tracking
There are currently a number of amateur radio satellites on the air. While it’s no small matter to build and launch a satellite, it is becoming much more common. From piggy-back riding on other satellite launches to getting onto the International Space Station and tossed out the window, so to speak, there are many ways of getting into orbit.
There are two primary types of satellites: FM and SSB/CW satellites. The FM satellites currently include AO-85, AO-91, and AO-92. They use a single uplink channel and downlink channel. You can think of them as repeaters traveling at 17,500 miles per hour at roughly 300 miles above the earth. These three satellites have a 70 cm uplink frequency and 2 m downlink frequency. That means that your transmitter needs to be on 70 cm and receiver on 2 m. It also means that you can listen on 2 meters and hear your own transmitted signal repeated through the satellite. This is called full duplex versus half duplex when you can only hear when you’re not transmitting.
The SSB/CW satellites currently in operation include XW-2A, XW-2B, XW-2F, CAS-4A, and CAS-4B. These satellites are not limited by a single channel. Instead they have a linear bandwidth that allows several stations in QSOs at the same time. You still have one band for uplink and another band for the downlink.
As you may have guessed, you cannot see these satellites at all times. In fact, their visibility is typically around 10 minutes from the time the satellite appears above the horizon, travels across the sky, and disappears beneath the opposite horizon.
To find the times that satellites will be overhead you can use a smart phone app, computer program, or go online. AMSAT (The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation) has an online calculator (https://www.amsat.org/track/index.php). You enter your location either from your grid square or latitude/longitude, select the satellite, and it will provide a listing of the satellite passes. That list will include dates and times for AOS, acquisition of satellite, the azimuth of the satellite, the maximum elevation, and the LOS, loss of satellite. This will help you determine when and where to point your antenna to connect with the satellite. It sounds a bit complicated, but once you’re got the process down it becomes second nature.
Satellite Ground Stations
Satellite operation, for all its out-of-this-world implications, doesn’t really require all that much in the way of equipment. A simple hand-held Yagi or log-periodic antenna works very well. Plus, a handy talkie can be used as the uplink transmitter and another one can be used for the downlink receiver. There are lots of possibilities for transmitting and receiving.
It does require a bit of skill, acquired by getting on the air, to line up the transmit and receive frequencies to hear yourself on the satellite, and to track the station on the other side of the QSO. It also takes a bit of skill to determine satellite orbits and where to point your antenna at the right time. All that just takes some practice to get it right.
And, of course, you can always improve your station. That could include adding a VHF/UHF satellite transceiver such as the Icom IC-9700. This rig is all set for satellite operation including receiving the downlink signal at the same time you’re transmitting — full duplex. You can also add computer control of the transceiver’s uplink and downlink frequency.
Another improvement is to use higher gain antennas that track the satellite’s azimuth (direction around the compass) and even elevation. Simple Yagis for 2 meters and 70 cm can be controlled by a small television rotator for azimuth and the antennas can be tilted upward around 15 degrees to cover the elevation of most satellite passes. Even better, you can use a rotator system that controls both azimuth and elevation. You can also interface the rotator system to your computer and let the software point the antennas.
Simple home station satellite antennas for 2 meters and 70 centimeters. A 15-degree elevation angle catches most satellites except when they are directly overhead.
My Home and Portable Station
As with most things in amateur radio, you can build as simple or complex a station as your heart desires and budget allows. For my station, I currently use the Icom IC-9700 Direct Sampling VHF/UHF Transceiver along with MacDoppler as the software controlling the rig’s frequency.
Satellite tracking system display using MacDoppler software. It’s showing my location, with the cross, the direction to the satellite, AO-92, and the track of the satellite. Note the other satellites that are also nearby.
At home I’ve used simple fixed elevation Yagis and found them excellent. At the moment I’m using omnidirectional eggbeater antennas. They get me on the air but don’t work all that well unless the satellite is nearly overhead. These are, however, versatile antennas that also allow local repeater and even SSB/FT8 QSOs.
My portable setup uses a battery to power the IC-9700, a laptop to control the frequency, along with a hand-held Arrow antenna. Free evtx viewer for a mac. This setup works exceptionally well in activating grids in rover mode. You can see this in the nearby photos.
Portable station set up from the back of my SUV in grid DM95 using IC-9700 and MacDoppler. Roblox hack tool for mac apocalypse rising.
Working Satellite DX
With satellites you will only hear stations that are in the footprint of the satellite. For the maximum distance you’ll be at one edge of the coverage pattern and the DX station at the other end. Some of my best DX from here in North Texas has been Alaska, Azores, Hawaii, and Northern Ireland. Even so, working grids in the USA can be a great deal of fun. There are 488 grids in the continental United States and it’s very, very difficult to collect them all.
Being the DX
That’s where grid expeditions come into play. As noted above, you can get on satellites with a handy talkie and a hand-held antenna. That makes activating a rare grid pretty easy. Well, of course, you have to get there first.
One thing to take into account is that those rare grids can be relatively nearby. They just don’t have any satellite operators, which is why they are rare. That makes for a fairly straightforward drive to reach a new grid, or you can even locate a borderline between two grids and activate them both at the same time. Activating a four-way grid line corner, putting four grids on the air at the same time, can really draw satellite operators.
That’s also what makes satellite operating fun. There is always something going on, new grids, new satellites, and quite a few new operators as they discover the magic of working ham radio stations through space.
![Macdoppler 2 26 – Satellite And Station Tracking System Macdoppler 2 26 – Satellite And Station Tracking System](https://screenshots.macupdate.com/JPG/19697/19697_1582801837_scr.jpg)
My Recent Grid Activation
For this past Thanksgiving holiday, my wife and I visited my daughter and her husband in Amarillo, Texas. They are located in grid DM95 which is not a rare grid but one that doesn’t get on satellites all that often. So, I tossed my gear in the car and set up for satellite QSOs the day after Thanksgiving while my wife and daughter headed out for some shopping.
Satellite portable operation from DM95 Amarillo Texas during 2019 Thanksgiving holiday.
I had two satellite passes that worked well around noon that day, AO-92 and AO-91. These are both FM satellites and very active. As I set things up for AO-92, my software got all sideways trying to find the database of satellite frequencies. By the time I figured out what was happening and managed to restore things, the satellite had crossed the sky and was near the horizon. Dang. I’m sure you’ve encountered similar situations.
For the AO-91 pass, all was well. I picked up the signal early and listened closely to who was on the air. One operator had set up on a grid corner — activating four grids for one contact. So, I tried to let that work itself out. This is necessary when you’re on an FM satellite as everyone has to use the one channel that’s available.
Later in the pass, things opened up a bit and I was able to work four stations and put grid DM95 into their logbooks. It’s nice to help out other hams with their pursuit of operating awards such as VUCC with a satellite endorsement for working 100 grids.
Over the years I’ve also activated a few gridlines: DM74/DM84 in New Mexico, EM05/DM95 on the Texas Oklahoma border, and EM22/EM23 in Texas. That was a great deal of fun and generated lots of interest and activity from other operators who wanted to add those grids to their logs.
Satellite portable operation from the DM74 and DM84 gridline in eastern New Mexico.
Grins
hat’s where the grins come into play — either working a new grid or activating one on a grid expedition. The community of satellite operators is a super open group of people, welcoming you into this aspect of our hobby, and offering any assistance needed. So, it is sweet to be able to return the favor of activating grids. After all, they’ve helped me add over 500 grids to my logbook.
If all this sounds of interest, for more information I recommend the AMSAT website and in particular their book Getting Started with Amateur Satellites. This book is updated every year with new satellites and covers entry level topics extremely well. Here’s the link (https://www.amsat.org/product/2019-edition-of-getting-started-with-amateur-satellites/).
Macdoppler 2 26 – Satellite And Station Tracking System Diagram
Get on the air with satellites — have fun!