from AMSAT Mailing List. Author WF1F Miles. ------------------------------------------- Mir Amateur Radio Status November 24, 1997 Antenna on Mir for the PMS station: The Mir crew thinks the antenna coax for the Mir PMS station may have been damaged during the space walk Thursday Nov. 6. The chief of the cosmonaut Amateur Radio Department in Moscow told me he has suggested to the crew not to use the PMS until the cable is fixed. The crew may attempt to fix the coax cable during the December 5th Space Walk. However, due to the problems with the attitude control computer, the space walk may be delayed until January 1998. Computer Problems: On November 14, the Mir attitude control computer shutdown when there was a power surged caused my the ground control turning the solar panels in the wrong direction. When ever there is a computer shutdown, the crew then powers off all of the non essential equipment, including the Amateur Radio equipment (except when Mike Foale was on Mir, he kept the ham link running, because he knew how important Ham was as a reliable backup). It typically takes 3-4 days to put the Space station back on line, after the attitude is restored. Then on November 22, the computer Broke, and the Station began to tumble again. This time, the crew had to swap hardware to get the computer to restart. The computer is now back on line and the crew has restored attitude control. SAFEX II Because of the new computer problems the crew is having, it is expected that the SAFEX II repeater may be shutdown for a while. The Amsat team has proposed a new frequency test for the PMS station (See details below). This test would move the 2-meter PMS from 145.985 Simplex FM to a Split band configuration. You would listen on 145.800 FM and Transmit on 437.850 FM. In order for this frequency combination to work, the SAFEX II repeater would have to be shutdown for the duration of the PMS frequency test. The Safex II Repeater transmits on 437.950, while the Mir Kenwood TM-733 PMS would be listening on 437.850, just 100k away. Mirex has performed some lab tests on the Kenwood TM-733 to test for possible desence problems. Mirex has determined that the Kenwood receive frequency must be at least 2.8 megacycles away from a co-located transmitter. In this case, the PMS antenna is on the Mir core module. The SAFEX II repeater antenna is on the Priroda Module, 70 feet away. Due to the close proximity of the antennas and the 100k frequency, it will not be possible to run both projects at the same time. Sputnik: Sputnik RS-17 is still going strong. Its 250 mw beacon has been head around the world. Sputnik has a tentative life expectancy of 3-6 weeks on batteries. There are no solar panels on Sputnik. Since it was launched on November 3, 1997, it is expected to last until the December time frame ( your actual mileage will vary). Attitude Sputnik is now flying behind and BELOW the Mir Space Station. The two objects are now approximately 1 minute apart. Mir Orbital Period: 92.254 minutes Perigee Height: 380.0 km Apogee Height: 390.1 km Sputnik Orbital Period: 92.219 minutes Perigee Height: 378.1 km Apogee Height: 388.5 km Biased on the included Nov 21 Keps. There are two QSL address for Sputnik, one in Russia and other Reunion Island. Cut off date for a card submission is Feb 98. Both addresses are valid, take your pick. If you hear the Beep Beep Beep of the Sputnik satellite, you can send away for a special QSL card. Envelopes should be well sealed and do not include cash. Send a SASE and an IRC coupon. Do not make any notes on the out side of the envelope with Amateur Radio Call signs visible. Dave Larsen MIREX / N6CO is not handling SWL cards for Sputnik, please use the address below. QSL Information for SWL (Short Wave Listener) Sergej Samburov PO Box 73 Kaliningrad-10 City Moscow Area, 14070, Russia There is another address given for QSL-ing on the Sputnik home page (http://www.oceanes.fr/~fr5fc/angspoutnik.html , the English language version), which states under "Listeners" and I quote: "PSE send your reports (envelope+irc) at FR5KJ radio club. FR5KJ radio club will send you back a diploma. FR5KJ radio club 103 rue de la Republique 97489 Saint Denis Cedex Reunion Island." Kep Data from November 21, 1997 RS-17 1 24958U 97058C 97325.18644546 .00036232 00000-0 42073-3 0 223 2 24958 51.6614 16.5544 0007692 346.1390 13.9315 15.61368070 2739 Mir 1 16609U 86017A 97325.18565845 .00006862 00000-0 86498-4 0 7924 2 16609 51.6551 16.5525 0007455 1.2467 358.8565 15.60886517671531 From Amsat November 23, 1997 Mir Frequency Experiments As part of ongoing frequency experiments to improve Amateur Radio operations on board Mir, and to better understand how these frequencies will be effective on the International Space Station, Mir will begin a 2-phase frequency experiment beginning December 1, 1997 and ending on May 31, 1997. For phase 1, a 70cm/2m crosslink experiment will operate for a 3 month period from December 1, 1997 up to March 1, 1998. On December 1 the Mir operating frequencies will change to: Uplink: 437.850 MHz Downlink: 145.800 MHz Phase 2 of this experiment will use a 2 meter-only set of uplink and downlink frequencies. This phase of the experiment will begin on March 1, 1998 and will also be of 3 months duration. This experiment was developed by the international partners in Manned Space discussions at the recent Toronto AMSAT-NA Space Symposium. It has been endorsed by the representatives present at the conference which included SAFEX, SAREX, AMSAT-UK, the IARU Region 2 President, the IARU Satellite Advisor, (ZS5AKV), ARI (Italy) and RAC (Canada). While not present at the Toronto meeting, the US Mirex team has also been consulted and have agreed with the spirit of this experiment. All hope that this experiment will help further understand how best to accommodate future operations of Amateur Radio on Manned Space Vehicles. [ANS thanks Tim Bosma, W6ISS, AMSAT's Manned Space Frequency Coordinator and Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, AMSAT-NA's VP for Manned Space, for the information that went into this bulletin item.] Mirex Web Page The Mirex web page is still under construction, but we have begun to post good Mir stuff http://www.ik1sld.org/mirex http://www.ik1sld.org/mirex.htm or http://www.geocities.com/~ik1sld/mirex http://www.geocities.com/~ik1sld/mirex.htm or WF1F Miles