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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.
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.
I hate to reply my own topic but the link didn't post for some reason.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqaKzIkyBug ham radio from Haiti earthquake
after the disaster.
The infrastructure is getting more and more robust though in terms of (unintentional) redundancy. Phone lines, wireless, fiber optic, cable, satellite; not to mention military and emergency services own communications systems.
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.
Bingo.
For example, my county and our neighbor are busy designing a trunked 700MHz system to cover all the government users within the two counties. This system will require more than a dozen repeater sites to get anything close to the coverage they need, PLUS a handful of old VHF systems to fill in a few of the important empty spots. All of this is linked through a network connection to a city 40 miles away in another county.
Cut through the fiber running next to the interstate -- POOF, all repeaters revert to standalone mode. No links. You wanna talk from the hinterlands back to the city? Good luck. Ditto if someone just accidentally pulls the plug on the controller in that distant city. (They probably do have someone who vacuums the rugs on a regular basis...)
In an earthquake, the towers fall over, or the antennas fall down. Those are on mountain tops. How fast do you think the commercial radio service people will get to all of them? OTOH, if the road is open I can drive to the top of the local mountain and repair whatever is up there myself. Or half a dozen people in this county can do it. Legally.
In a couple of years "safe haven" rules kick in. That means that all of those repeaters the two counties put up will have strict, reduced power limits and thus limited coverage. My repeaters have no such limits, and the main one on the mountain top is not even close to full power right now. I can fix one repeater and have coverage over the entire county -- unlike even the existing LMR VHF system in use.
What the OP is probably missing is that ham radio is picking up a lot of the "emergency services own communications systems" business, and a lot of government agencies are betting the retirement fund on hams being there.
And it also works when every cell site and PSTN trunk is tied up because Bob is calling Alice to make sure that they're okay after the hurricane/explosion/terrorist act/peanut butter sandwich incident.
http://nanosaild.engr.scu.edu/dashboard.htm has the current position and flight path.