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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
http://nanosaild.engr.scu.edu/dashboard.htm has the current position and flight path.