Amateur Satellites

Manny people don't now this, but the amateur radio community has quite an assortment of satellites they may use in there hobby. Unfortunately we don't have geostationary satellites, but who knows in the future…..

The amateur satellites are called OSCAR, Orbiting Satellite Carriages Amateur Radio-equipment. Most of the satellites I use are the so called LEOS, Low Earth Orbiting Satellites. These micro-satellites have attitudes of about a 400 km. These satellites are in a polar orbit, they are moving from our point of view. A typical pass of these satellites take no more then 10 to 15 minutes.

To predict a satellite pass of a certain satellite we use software witch calculates the passes. There are quit some programs available on the net.

Some of the satellites holds digital data, and are used as store and forward BBS, like UO-22

KO-25 KO-23 etc.., AO-10 has a transponder, witch is used on SSB, UO-14 AO-27 and SO-35

are also used as some kind of FM repeater. SO-35 now also digipeat frames for APRS, this is

a nice expansion for the APRS system. APRS stands for Automatic Positioning Reporting system, it also uses the GPS satellites for positioning.

Some of them also have camera's on board, they make great pictures……

I could go on forever, but that's not my intention.

You see it's an amazing world amateur radio, that's why it's the greatest hobby in the world.