Ron Hashiro

The ANDE satellite has de-orbited.

• The last packet received at 22:27:08z December 24, 2007 by JA0CAW, and audio is available at the ANDE de-orbit website.
• The last received packet on the global APRS network was at 21:14:11z December 24, 2007 by W6MSU. "W5MSU]APRS,ANDE-1*,qAO,W6MSU-3:=3803.21NS12121.62W&" It was received in California.
• About 20 minutes earlier in Japan, JA6PL captured a packet.
• A little more than an hour prior, WA4AEJ had captured packets in Niceville, FL.

You can see the internal Side A battery temperature rise as the telemetry is captured real-time by amateur radio stations around the world. The rise started at approximately 12:00z on Dec 24, so ANDE lasted only about another 12 hours.

The final altitude prior to the descent may have been 94.65 statute miles or lower, as calculated by keplerian elements only 16 minutes old.

The ANDE satellite lasted one year, three days, four hours in space, having been released at an altitude of 216 statue miles on 18:22z on December 21, 2006 by the Space Shuttle Discovery, mission STS-116 while over the South Pacific. It exceeded the estimated mission life of nine months.

The EARC 146.880 VHF repeater was down Dec 10 to 16 due to wind damage to the Diamond F23 antenna. The antenna was replaced with a spare.

The Oahu incidents web page has been updated. Check out the YouTube video newscasts under the Contingency section! You can see our recent experience with high wind and high rain storms has been felt before.

Just worked Cedric, WH7JI from Lanai City. He passed his Technician class exam on November 14 on Oahu, and I happened to be his first contact. Lanai City hasn't had an active ham in about 25 years.

Cedric is running a Yaesu FT-2800, and can be heard on the state-wide VHF system.

Click here to hear audio from an ISS pass, courtesy of www.issfanclub.com. Suni Williams talks with teachers at a conference at Johnson Space Flight Center on May 31 2007, while passing over Oahu. Ground station was WH6PN at Sacred Hearts Academy. The ISS had a good signal. I got to listen to a part of the downlink to this QSO while parking my car into a parking structure heading to work.

The last days of the ANDE-MAA satellite, Space Command object #29664 are chronicled here. This unusual, battery-powered satellite will last around 365 days in orbit, having been released by the STS-116 crew onboard the shuttle Discovery on December 21, 2006.

Your webmaster is one of a world-wide network of ground control stations.

Compare that against the last days of the RAFT satellite in May.

There is an award certificate available if you work ANDE in the last ten days of operation. Click here for details.

On the November 23, 14:49:00z (November 23, 4:49 am HST) pass, ground station AH6RH finally turned on the laser beacons of the ANDE satellite.

The command sequence for Side A started at 14:48:40z and took 20 seconds, but by that time, ANDE had moved from it's closest approach (elevation of 74 degrees, azimuth bearing of 226 degrees, range of 158 statute miles, RX doppler of 92 Hertz) to a new postion (elevation of 55 degrees, azimuth bearing of 165 degrees, range of 184 statute miles, RX doppler of -1,840 Hertz) which is just about the edge of the effective beamwidth.

Success was finally achieved by pinging the satellite awake about two minutes earlier using a 2kHz offset for doppler, then swinging the Arrow antenna to point to the middle of the pass. ANDE was so low (altitude of 152 miles), and moving way faster than the usual 9 minute, 30 second passes for the ISS (altitude of 220 miles), that it is now only 8 minutes horizon-to-horizon for good passes. Doppler was +/-3.5 kHz for the pass, which was descending east of Oahu.

Power output was about 50 watts from the Icom IC-910H, into a two element Arrow antenna (the director was removed to increase beamwidth). No receiver pre-amp was used. Received signal was at least half-scale during the pass, so the automated logon sequence was used. The logon, commands and disconnect sequenced flawlessly for the first time. Time permitted only the high telemetry and laser beacon enabled commands for Side A to be entered.

The Hawaii VHF/UHF Repeater Page has been updated with VOIP (IRLP and Echolink) repeater information courtesy of Jack, KH6DQ.

The D-STAR Page has been updated with Hawaii D-STAR repeater information.

Check out this Youtube video clip.

A ham radio swapmeet will be held at the Aiea Elementary School, Saturday Oct 6 from 8:00 am to 12 noon. Amateur radio license testing will be available.

New WXSpots program and web site debuted this morning.

Hank, KH6HAK, informs me that IC Supply at 2978 Ualena St near the airport carries the Anderson Powerpole connectors.

Check out this web page, containing information and articles on the early days of amateur radio.

Manolo Morales did an excellent story featuring amateur radio operations during hurricane events. Click here to read the story.

New web pages have been posted. See 1296 MHz operations.

New web pages have been posted. See HF mobile. In addition, the pages for the effects of doppler shift and ISS communications, Warren Munro's classes and the CDARC Testing Schedule, which have been updated.

New web pages have been posted. See Happenings in Hawaii, Ham Radio Exam Testing, Morse Code and Study Guides.

The RAFT satellite is about to deorbit, by May 31, 2007. You can see the warming effects of coming in contact with increasing density of the atmosphere.

RAFT has also detected the doppler effect of approach the space fence radar in operation along the southern portion of the US.

Bruce Clark, K0YW, operating KH7X at KH6YY made the first successful EME contact from Hawaii on 2304 MHz at 2:39Z, 23-APR-2007 (Sunday afternoon, 4:39 pm). This is the first time EME from Hawaii has been worked on this band.

Contact was with Al, W5LUA, running 200 watts into a 12 foot TVRO dish. Equipment included an SSB Electronics transverter, a preamp and a Kenwood TS-2000 on 144 Mhz.

Location was the KH7X station at Alex Benton KH6YY's QTH. A number of hams helped Bruce with his attempt. They included KH6YY, KH6ND, KH7U, WH6GS, AH6NF and AH6RH.

2.3 GHz is the near the same frequency band as Wi-Fi wireless PC networking, and residential microwave ovens. Typical Wi-Fi devices are less than 200 milliwatts, and household microwave ovens are 1,000 watts or less. This attempt used more than 1,000 times the normal output of a Wi-Fi device, and about 1/5 the power of a household microwave oven.

Operations was in a tent pitched next to the TVRO dish to reduce feedline losses. The TX feedline was 7/8-inch heliax, and RX feedline included LMR-400 and LMR-600. Noise caused by rain falling on the tent can overwhelm the audio from the radio and disrupt QSOs.

The CW signal was just above the noise level, and sounded "watery" as if the speaker was being held underwater. The warbling tone was much worse than arctic flutter. The sound was typical due to the RF signal reflecting off the irregular surface of the moon. Doppler was on the order of a 3 kHz shift due to the relative motion of the earth and moon, multiplied by the frequency. CW speed was about 13 WPM, with much of the QSO sent twice in short phrases due to the signals being just above the noise level.

Click here to hear audio from an ISS pass, Scott, WA6LIE talking with Charles Simonyi, KE7KDP aboard the ISS, on April 10, 2007, moments after completing his first contact with Hawaii.

Ron, AH6RH made the first contact in the world with space tourist Charles Simonyi, KE7KDP while he was passing over Hawaii aboard the International Space Station. The contact occured at 04/11/2007 04:25z.

A female voice announcing "November Alpha One...Sierra Sierra" came on. Ron held a conversation with Suni Williams KD5PLB. Then Suni said "I have a person who wants to talk with you." After a few moments, Charles came on. I welcomed him to amateur radio, and was glad to make contact with him. He mentioned he was thrilled to make contact with Hawaii. I asked him if he was the author of the "Hungarian Notation (variable naming convention)" used in Windows programming which I had done over 20 years ago, and he chuckled as he commented that he was and that others had used and abused the notation. I commented that it was great to meet the creator of the notation.

See: ARRL news story

The ARISS ground station at Sacred Hearts Academy, WH6PN, held an ARISS Telebridge Contact between Vasant Valley School, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, India and the ISS on Feb 23, 2007 10:50 pm HST. Click the above link for details.

The pass was a 79 degree descending pass. Start was 22:50:47 at 319 degrees; max was 22:55:37 at 228 degrees, 79 degree elevation; end was 23:00:21 at 143 degrees.

A partial audio clip of the downlink (recorded on a vertical antenna) is at: Click here to listen

The astronaut is Suni Williams, KD5PLB. She's responding to these questions:

• If a gold fish is taken up to a microgravity environment how will the fish react to the lack of gravity as it already floats in a fish tank?
• What happens to the respiratory gases that are released and remain inside the ISS (like CO2)?
• Why do some planets have rings?
• What happens to a bullet fired in space?
• What kinds of activities are you carrying out? How will they be beneficial to mankind?
• We are told that resources are highly limited in the ISS. How do you go about this difficulty for example: How much water are you carrying and is there any facility of reusing it over and over again?
• What kind of food you eat in the ISS and with what frequency?

Ron, AH6RH attempted a double satellite hop between Hawaii and California. AH6RH sent packet messages from Oahu, to the ANDE satellite orbiting about 200 miles overhead. ANDe relayed the message to the PCSAT satellite over the North Pacific to Scott, WA6LIE in Monterey, California. The attempt occured at 01/14/2007 01:09:47z. PCSAT-1 did not hear and digipeat the packets from ANDE-1. Later during the pass, contact was made directly through PCSAT with both Scott and Jim, W7XZ.

See: AH6RH-7 messages

Amateur radio operators were notified starting at 6:41 pm that a tsunami watch was in effect for a quake that occured in the Kuril Islands. The watch was cancelled at 9:33 pm.

See: Kuril Island quake

Four new amateur radio satellites have been released. See: RAFT and ANDE Operations Page

The latest keplerian elements can be obtained from here. The ANDE satellite is labelled as #29664, "ANDE (NO-61)". See: Daily keps

The downlink packets and telemetry can be observed here: Igate traffic

Hawaii is serving as ground stations for telemetry and control for the effort.

Here are some reports from RAFT and ANDE See: issfanclub.com

ANDE's two watt transmitter makes clean reception of ANDE difficult. Even with a 3 element beam, the pass has to higher than 80 degrees or more before a Kantronics KPC-3+ can decode the audio into data.

The NO-44 PCSAT satellite is usable for about another week. As a result, there's two good passes this weekend to contact the West Coast via PCSAT. Sometime next week, the satellite will fall into the earth's shadow, and reset. When that happens, the digipeating operation will stop. See: The PCSAT web page

The digipeating frequency is 145.825 MHz. The callsign is PCSAT-1. The alternate aliases are: ARISS, WIDEn-n, APRSAT.

The passtimes for Honolulu in HST are:

• Start: Sat Jan 13 3:07:14 PM @ bearing 006 degrees
• Middle: Sat Jan 13 3:13:27 PM @ elevation 12 degrees, bearing 059 degrees
• End: Sat Jan 13 3:18:56 PM
• LOS: Sat Jan 13 3:19:36 PM @ bearing 112 degrees.
• Maximum duration: 11 mins 42 secs

• Start: Sun Jan 14 2:38:00 PM @ bearing 013 degrees
• Middle: Sun Jan 14 2:43:24 PM @ elevation 8 degrees, bearing 057 degrees
• End: Sun Jan 14 2:48:42 PM @ bearing 101 degrees
• LOS: Sat Jan 13 2:48:42 PM @ bearing 101 degrees.
• Maximum duration: 10 mins 42 secs

You might find this Youtube video amusing and insightful. See: The CF Rap

If you like HF contesting, you'll like The Ham Band