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NASA Seeks Ham Operators' Help To Test NanoSail-D
SEWilco writes "Despite our older headline, NanoSail-D was not 'Lost in space.' It was stuck in its canister. The solar sail nano-satellite finally ejected on Wednesday. The three-day countdown to sail deployment began then, so we'll have to see what happens next." And clm1970 adds "In another conventional use for an arguably unconventional hobby given the technology of 2011, NASA is requesting the help of Amateur Radio or 'ham operators' to help listen to a beacon signal of the nano-satellite. Many say the hobby is dying, but for every 'death knell,' it seems another application brings it back to life to prove its usefulness."
Usenet.
Which, by the way, *still* isn't dead, thank-you-very-much smb and tomt.
The Eternal September, BTW, finally ended.
>> was not 'ost in space'.
However, the 'L' from the original submission was.
I'm surprised that it survived that long without power. It must be a very simple payload (i.e. no batteries, just solar cells and a transmitter)
Support SETI@home
When shit hits the fan, ham radio is there to keep basic communications open.
It is possible to connect ham radio to a phone line and get someone in the disaster area
connected to a phone line to a president or similar, regardless of how bad the infrastructure is hit,
It will work. All these guys with ham gear are crucial, more than we can imagine.
For the billions we waste on crap we never use, like flying humvee prototypes, we could afford to
subsidize these guys a bit. Even a $500 homeland security rebate would keep (in the us) ham
radio alive and kicking for years.
But there is no way I can possibly pick up a signal like that over all the RFI from local BT issued power-line networking adapters.
Thanks for the inaction ofcom....
As an amateur radio operator (biased, I know, and not just my plate voltage)....I know it's usually regarded as an 'old' hobby that is 'dying'. The humor in this, of course, is that it's a gadget-obsessed hobby with increasingly high-tech equipment and significant quantities of programming and research regarding digital transmission modes and DSP, not to mention software-defined radio and other sorts of things. It's a geeky hobby, yes, but this is Slashdot. "arguably unconventional hobby given the technology of 2011" seems both uninformed and, admittedly, a bit silly regarding where it's being said.
Q: whats the frequency kenneth?
A: The NanoSail-D beacon signal can be found at 437.270 MHz.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The whole problem is that the ARRL and to a lesser extent the RSGB are pushing the whole emcomm thing above all else - so you end up with idiots in high-vis jackets getting in the way of the emergency services as they wave their obsolete ex-PMR radios around trying to look important. These twats haven't got a clue how any of their radios work, or how to build an aerial, or what's actually inside an ATU. They just buy shiny boxes from suppliers and sit and talk into them. There's no self-training, there's no experimenting, there's no development - and woe betide anyone who happens to want to use the same 1MHz chunk of band as them, when they fire up one of their "exercises".
Be part of the chemo that is curing amateur radio. Friends don't let friends do emcomm. Get involved with projects like this satellite, and any time you see someone with a high-vis jacket who isn't digging a hole in the road slap them about the head with a Tait Orca reprogrammed for Raynet frequencies.
73s de MM0YEQ
Irv Hoff.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Nobody knew it was in the container. So it WAS lost.
(Although I suppose you could argue that it was really just hiding.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
According to this: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/smallsats/nanosaild.html the beacons they asked amateur radio operators to listen for have been received and the satellite appears to be operating normally.
Several of the satellites from that launch (STP-S26, a Minotaur out of Kodiak) use amateur radio communications, including the University of Texas nanosat, FASTRAC, which I worked on. It isn't terribly uncommon. Lots of ISS crews have amateur radio operators and they have an amateur rig up there for them.
"Blades on a ceiling fan" do not open. So, if the satellite is trying to open "like" that, no wonder there's problems.
HTH. HAND.
If there is one thing that is so cool is to pickup transmissions directly from an orbital spacecraft. There are more satellites like this, i.e. OOREOS, but for me I have yet to setup a worthwhile antenna (a j-pole rig in a window barely works, I've been too lazy to get something better). Someone with basic equipment can get hands-on experience of gathering information on frequencies, orbital predictions, getting it all together for that brief pass, recording and decoding the transmissions. All done without having to pay someone for online access, royalties, and licensing fees.
mfwright@batnet.com
> "..an arguably unconventional hobby given the technology of 2011"
Oh go away you silly person.
At my local newsagent the computer magazines are dwindling fast, while the electronics/radio mags are making a strong comeback.
Computers are just a commodity and excessively boring. Nerds are looking elsewhere.
Suddenly ham radio is cool again. Even morse is retro-cool.
Ralphie: [Reading it after decoding Morse Code message] Be sure to drink your Ovaltine. Ovaltine? A crummy commercial? Son of a bitch!
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Is about to go HAM?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Ahhh, PMR. I didn't know that hams in Great Britain commonly modify what we would call FRS radios over here in the states. (Interesting fact: PMR446 radios operate in the US ham bands. You can't use them here unless you are a ham. Their narrowband and odd frequency splits make them difficult to use with standard ham gear, but the LPD frequencies are really cool and only 10mW!).
If this is a problem in GB, then it is the fault of the government agency for not demanding proper training before making it a resource. Ok, if this is a problem anywhere, ditto.
As for knowing what's in an "ATU", I'm stumped. I'm looking up that acronym and trying to find some British and ham relevant result. "AUTODIN Transfer Unit"? No, AUTODIN is a US military thing, but is communications related. Audio Tape Unit? Oh, wait, Antenna Tuning Unit. That must be it. Sorry, we don't use ATUs for most of our VHF work. We don't need to know what is in one to be a valuable resource for the emergency services people we support. They don't care.
Oh my God, you people still use Taits over there? I've seen those. They really suck. You know the old saying, don't you? "He who has a Taits is lost." I understand now why your hams modify PMR radios; they don't have a good supply of surplus real radio equipment (like Moto, Kenwood, BK) to play with.
...and I'm sure the "ironic" KIxTTY calls are all taken anyway.
Don't group Electronics and Radio mags together. Arduinos and hacked Roombas are a shitload more popular than crankstart Heathkits and QRP Altoids boxes.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
If this is a problem in GB, then it is the fault of the government agency for not demanding proper training before making it a resource. Ok, if this is a problem anywhere, ditto.
Well, not really. The FCC's main job is to make sure that the bands are actually used to some extent and to ensure that the amateur band users don't mess up anybody else. So they're not necessarily concerned that your typical new ham doesn't know resistor color codes (or morse code for that matter), just that they have enough brains to plug a system in and not operate out of band or transmit something inappropriate.
MMOYEQ's comment does resonate to a degree and it's a bit scary to see just how basic the intro electronics articles are in CQ (the ARRL's magazine) - but they're having to deal with a bunch of competing interests. The frequencies do need to get used - lots of business owners would love to gobble up Amateur spectrum. Not everybody wants to talk to a bunch of middle aged guys about their antennas (mine's bigger). Emcomm is at least useful and social. So I see it as the most visible aspect of Amateur radio today, but not necessarily the most important. In these bizarre days I think you can do worse than to associate with a bunch of mildly introverted overweight guys creating a defined social structure which potentially involves physical activity and has the side effect that it can help other people. A few of them just might venture into soldering something more complex than a power lead. 73 KL1SA
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"Many say the hobby is dying"
They've been saying the same thing about Apple for years...
When they released SuitSat a number of years ago - we had specifics on when and where to look and listen. This time - nothing..
Who said anything about the FCC? When I said "government agency" I was referring to the emergency services agencies that are allowing those yellow-vested know-nothings into their EOCs and field operations without any training on ICS or whatever it was MM0YEQ was complaining about. It's THEM who decide who gets in the door, and if they let any yahoo with a ham license in they are the ones at fault, not the hams or the FCC.
MMOYEQ's comment does resonate to a degree and it's a bit scary to see just how basic the intro electronics articles are in CQ (the ARRL's magazine)
'CQ' is not ARRL's magazine. You're thinking of QST. Yes, there are some basic articles there because not everyone knows everything when they start out and ARRL isn't there to serve just the Amateur Extra Class licensees. Even some of the Extras can use the basic articles there, since some kinds of circuits have been developed since some Extras got licensed. We're still not talking about the problem MM0YEQ complained about. You really don't need to know the resistor color code to be a useful radio operator in an EOC. Or how to use an ATU, whatever that is. (We have one on the roof now. An auto-tuner. Nobody needs to know how to use it or what's in it, because all they have to do is transmit and it tunes. I know what's in it because I'm an Amateur Extra Class and we know everything. And I opened it up to look. And it's my job to know what's in it and how it works because I'm one of the main technical resources in our county for the emergency manager.)
In these bizarre days I think you can do worse than to associate with a bunch of mildly introverted overweight guys creating a defined social structure which potentially involves physical activity and has the side effect that it can help other people. A few of them just might venture into soldering something more complex than a power lead. 73 KL1SA
10-4 good buddy.
Who said anything about the FCC? When I said "government agency" I was referring to the emergency services agencies that are allowing those yellow-vested know-nothings into their EOCs and field operations without any training on ICS or whatever it was MM0YEQ was complaining about.
Sorry. Wrong government agency. Too many of the damned things anyway. I've not encountered those issues out here in the hinterlands but I can well imagine something along those lines going on in the real world. Must be fun.
'CQ' is not ARRL's magazine. You're thinking of QST.
Ah yes. Brain fart.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
While listening to the bacon signal, they could hear a faint crackling. Something was sowering the transmission and hampering their progress. What a porkuliar turn of events.
Parts of this are very insightful.. As a new ham (and a real one, I should add... My first HF rig was a Swan 500 that was broken when it was given to me... It does 400w on 40m now, enough to blow the doors off those riceboxes).. I've really noticed that there are two camps in ham radio. The "hams" and the "operators". There seem to be a great many "operators" that want to know nothing about experimenting, aren't interested in opening their radio up to tinker with it (It's so expensive, I don't want to break it!).. If everything doesn't come out of the cardboard box working exactly as expected, they review it as 'crap' and return it. Real hams know that nothing works right to begin with, and sets about to making it work for _him_. I have a friend who is very solidly an operator, and is often 'bored' with ham radio. I think that emcomm is something that operators do to keep from being bored, so that they have 'something interesting' to do with those shiny ricebox 2m/440 radios & HT's. As a later poster stated, at least they are using the frequencies, so more power to them.
Each processor would proceed sequentially as if it had been better for them not to rise against Saul.
unconventional hobby given the technology of 2011
Just because you can't buy a copy of "Microsoft Stroke" doesn't mean ham radio is obsolete. There is a world of technology that is not governed by Larry Ellison, Google or the panting Ubuntu acolytes.
Hear, Hear. I've done ham radio since 1988 and have become quite a bit less active as of late. This after doing all the club, RACES, and Skywarn stuff. The EMCOMM stuff seems to attract the kind of people who drive around in ex-police cruisers and generally get in the way when things get sticky. I know - I've seen it and can tell stories (and true ones!)
Ham radio is only good in the very initial stages of a disaster, before relief starts arriving. That is when basic technology shines. It's been my experience that once relief arrives, ham radio cannot sustain any kind of infrastructure that can support the massive communications requirements of federal, state/provincial, county, and local governments - let alone NGOs such as the Red Cross. I know this, I spent a healthy amount of my time trying to establish a statewide packet radio network. Very few people had enough knowledge to appreciate the need for such a thing, and fewer still knew much about the technology in which they professed an interest.
Ham radio does have its purposes, but they are truly limited due to a lack of central planning (which can also be a strength) and by the dumbing-down that the hobby went through in the early 1990s. Yeah, I said it.
Oh. Okay. So this project I'm on to network the county with a self-healing mesh of wireless nodes running 802.11 and OLRP and ipv4 and ipv6 at 54Mbps on amateur radio frequencies is old tech.
I'll go home now. We're old school.
The number of US amateur radio operators has been growing consistently since 2007. In fact, except for a period of a few years at the start of the web era, it's grown consistently since its inception.
A lot of nerdy people got into ham radio in the early 1990's because they wanted to do packet radio, which came from Aloha Net, the same project in the 1960's that begat packet networks and eventually TCP/IP and friends. When those folks moved over to the wired internet, and let their ham licenses lapse, the ham population declined. But in the past few years it's been growing again, partially due to crossover from DIY/MAKE people interested in everything from bouncing microwave signals off the moon to building their own radios out of a handful of transistors to GPS tracking with Arduino shields and RF transmitters.
Here's a graph:
http://wa5znu.org/2011/01/ham-census/2005-2010-chart.png
Leigh/WA5ZNU
As for knowing what's in an "ATU", I'm stumped. I'm looking up that acronym and trying to find some British and ham relevant result.
"Antenna Tuning Unit". It's the same on your side of the pond, but not a VHF thing, more for HF ;-)
As for the Taits, I've found them to be pretty good. Disclaimer - I work for a Motorola dealer but operate two very large MPT1327 networks, which are all Tait radios, repeaters and SCUs. The Motorola stuff can't touch it. I think the best example is comparing the power draw of a a GM340 and a Tait TM8200 running at 25W - the Tait will be pulling about 3A for the Motorola's 10A...
Ok, it's mostly crowded with spam and pr0n\\\\binaries, and ISPs have mostly stopped providing news service as a standard feature of an account, and I haven't had a decent NNTP reader in a decade or more, but yeah, Usenet's still around. I stopped being able to read all of it (printed on paper, 4-up double-sided) some time in the 80s, stopped being able to read more than a couple of newsgroups later in the 90s, but Google Groups still provides access if I need to look for things, and the last time I checked Google still had DejaNews articles with spotty coverage of stuff I'd written almost three decades ago.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I just got my ticket last year, wish I hadn't waited so long. There is a lot more to the hobby than I think most people realize, certainly more than enough interesting applications that are using cutting edge technology to keep a person interested and learning for a long, long time.
I would imagine hams will be exploring new ways to do things with the radio spectrum for as long as the radio spectrum continues to exist.
-Lod
Without entering in the argument of "Ham radio is dying (or is it not)", I have a doubt.
I mean, I am pretty sure should have way better antennas than most of ham radio users. If so, what is the need for the ham operators? It is just a way to remind everyone that they have a cool thing in space? As if your neighbour (who usually has no trouble with those things) asks you to put a nail in his living room wall, to hang in it "that pretty Picasso that I have just bought".
Why can't
... to remotely control our Space Chimps!!!
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
Encomm didn't get in our way during the Katrina disaster. We had lots of hams doing their public service duties that probably never heard of Encomm. It's not that we ignored it, we just didn't acknowledge it exists. :) We'll be there in spite of the wheels telling us how to do it. We've been doing it for more than 75 years without Encomm.
As usual, that depends. As a Raynet member, I recognise all the problems and stereotypes, but some of us are trying to reclaim the network. I think we're all fed up of hearing "Lockerbie blah blah blah. Lockerbie blah blah blah. Lockerbie blah blah blah. Lockerbie blah blah blah." and people waving around unrepairable, cranky, obsolete bricks. It can work. This winter, Raynet were out, doing real work in the background, usually affiliated to other organisations too. But people need to get involved and do away with groups that are basically Fred and Dave's Radio Club (with added self importance and reduced clue.)
In the past people used to try to get involved with the Council, Police, etc. exercises, but we're moving away from that since any problems they find will be fixed by the next one rather than handed to us, and the strengths of Amateur radio are adapting to the unknown. And that comes by experimenting, learning and knowing how stuff work, just like you're advocating.
So I'd say, friends help friends dump the reprogrammed PMRs and 1970s bricks, and go and learn how to be useful at emcomms instead. Learning the insides of an ATU is really useful as you say (G3PCJ's kit is a good start). Then go figure out how to tune against a water pipe and a lightning conductor, or some random bits of wire. And certainly listen out for this satellite, and the rest of the AmSats too.
73 de an anonymous G4.
These twats haven't got a clue how any of their radios work, or how to build an aerial, or what's actually inside an ATU.
Have things changed that much since the 1960s? Back then, getting a license meant passing a test that showed competence with electronics; you had to understand Ohm's law among many other laws and formulas, understand all the electronic parts and what they did, you had to know how to read a schematic, etc.
That's no longer necessary?
Free Martian Whores!
And those are the same guys at hamfests selling those riceboxes with all the cardboard box and manuals and baggies... Selling their 1989 Yaesu radio for $20.00 less than what I can get the current model for new.
Hey HAMS your old gear is NOT worth what you are asking. 50% price from what you paid, not what the new one is selling for. your FT-767 is NOT worth $800.00 to anyone. Stop bringing your stuff to a hamfest that you dont want to sell and display it with unrealistic price tags...
It's so bad I just dont go to hamfests anymore. Everyone thinks their junk is gold. The last time I had a table at dayton I sold 12 old Pentium 4 laptops in 20 minutes because I had a honest price on them. The old fart down the row selling his for $500.00 was nuts. I miss the guys selling parts, selling stuff for honest prices and nobody wants to chat anymore at hamfests.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
IT's necessary, but you can buy the test question pool to study from. All you need to remember is A,B,C,D and not actually understand the questions.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I get beat up (metaphorically speaking) whenever I express my opinion on this subject. There is a continual erosion of the "difficulty" in the tests. The technical aspects are being de-emphasized. The Morse requirement is gone and the knowledge of electronics is going.
Too many people complained that they couldn't pass even a 5WPM Morse test. Putting aside for a moment arguments over relevance, 5WPM is not hard. It required maybe 20 minutes of exercise a night for a month. But that was too much. I hear the same argument now regarding the technical requirements, "I don't plan on building my radio, so why do I have to study electronics?".
The result is that now many license holders today are unable to build a TX or RX. They are essentially appliance operators - glorified CB users. If you doubt me regarding this technical observation, take a look at old Ham magazines/books (from a few decades ago). How many people capable of passing today's licensing tests could understand them without additional study? There are all sorts of interesting digital/satellite/etc. technical facets now that could replace at least some of the old knowledge exams. But were they to be reflected in the tests, the complaints about them being too hard would escalate.
Yes, I generalize. But that's the pattern as I see it.
yeah; sure. I'm an 'operator'. Probably even less because I don't know any 'emcomm' protocols or how to participate in an emergency situation. I use my radio to communicate with the rest of my offroad club. We do trail stewardship projects and 2M is a huge improvement over CB. To us, amateur radio is just a tool we use in our hobby. It is not a hobby in and of itself (though I played briefly with APRS)... We all support the local repeater society with our membership dollars and we have a standing offer to drive anyone to any of the remote repeaters in the event of an emergency or bad weather... Sorry I'm not 'real' enough for you... Let me know how your last from-scratch offroad suspension design worked out. I mean, you _do_ drive a car right? Like me, you should know how to completely disassemble and rebuild it and re-engineer vast portions of it to suit your needs... If you don't, you're just another loser driver like the rest of them.
Nah, you're an offroad truck enthusiast that likes to use a radio and has a nasty chip on his shoulder.
And yes, of course I know how to completely disassemble and rebuild and re-engineer a truck.
Each processor would proceed sequentially as if it had been better for them not to rise against Saul.
My point being that you put down a group of people for not being as passionate about your hobby as you are. Re-read your message and then try to tell me who has the chip on their shoulder. I challenged the test, got high 90's (Industry Canada exam), have my license, and use my 'ricebox mobile and handhelds' in the field, to, like, you know, actually talk to people. So I don't spend my evenings and weekends in my basement exchanging QSL cards with the guy in Paraguay... If that's what turns you on, knock yourself out. I have different interests.
I can kind of see both sides of the argument, though. If you set the initial barrier to entry too high, then fewer and fewer people will bother at all. It's quite a subtle and difficult balancing act, and I'm not sure the RSGB has it right. I'm damn sure the ARRL hasn't...