Carasat Latest News

Carasat Field Day 2009 Report

Carasat Field Day 2008 Report

Carasat Field Day 2007 Report

With less than 2 hours to go in Field Day we finally made our one contact on SO-50 for one point and we obtained 100 bonus points for making a contact on a Satellite Station. Click here for the 17 photos and the full report

To see the other 50 photos of Field Day not involving Carasat, click here .

Carasat Field Day 2006 Report

We again had a success with 7 contacts for 7 points and 100 bonus points for making a contact on a Satellite Station. Click here for the 18 photos and the full report

Carasat Field Day 2005 Report

Bob Zimmerman Speaks on "Leaving Earth" at Cara Meeting Feb. 22, 2005

Bob Zimmerman KB3IWD is a UPI science columnist and a published author who has made a career of writing about the history of space exploration and speculating on its future. His most recent book is entitled Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, from Joseph Henry Press, and was published in September, 2003. It was the winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society, an award given annually for the year's best space history book. Bob completely summarized the history of Man in Space and explained why the astronauts on the International Space Station want to talk to ordinary hams. To see Bob's speaking schedule in this area, his books and his UPI weekly articles on space click here. For four photos at the meeting click here.

Rick Hambly Speaks on EAGLE at Cara Meeting Nov. 23, 2004

The AMSAT Vision Statement is to deploy high earth orbit satellite systems that offer daily coverage by 2009 and continuous coverage by 2012. Rick Hambly W2GPS and President of Amsat gave a detailed 22 slide Power Point presentation on the proposed Eagle satellite. It will be 6 cu ft, weigh 50 Kg in this high orbit, and have a power budget of 80 watts. The specifications are set forth in the slides.

Click here for the Power Point slides.  3.2 Megs

Click here for six photos from that evening.

For the latest info on EAGLE go to the Amsat web site
http://www.amsat.org and click on the EAGLE links.

Rick Hambly Speaks on ECHO at Cara Meeting August 24, 2004

The new ECHO satellite known as AMSAT Oscar 51 (AO-51) was launched June 29, 2004. Rick Hambly W2GPS then the Executive VP of Amsat and a member of the Project Management Team presented a 42 slide Power Point presentation on the technical overview, the integration and launch campaign, how to operate AO-51 and a short discussion of the next AMSAT amateur satellite Eagle. The analog voice operation has a downlink of 435.300 MHz FM and an uplink of 145.920 MHz FM with 67 Hz PL tone.

 Click here for the Power Point slides  3.5 Megs

Click here for four photos from that evening.

For the latest info on ECHO go to the Amsat web site
http://www.amsat.org and click on the ECHO links.

Carasat Field Day 2004 Report

Once again Art N3OY came through near the end to make one voice contact on FO-29 to obtain the 100 point bonus for a successful satellite station.
Click here for the photos and the full report.

Carasat Field Day 2003 Report

We had a great time. We made more contacts (28) on AO-40: 17 on voice and 11 on cw.
Click here for the photos and the full report in its first version .

Field Day 2003 Preparation

Field Day is Saturday June 28 and Sunday June 29. It officially starts at 2 pm on Saturday afternoon and it is being held at the Mount View Middle School at 12101 Woodford Drive Marriottsville 21104.

At the PVRC Picnic on Saturday, June 21, 2003, Rol K3RA discussed preparations for Field Day. Photos at the picnic are here. Attending from Carasat were Art N3OY, Bernie K3BAZ, Deb W3DEB, Ed N2EC and Bob KC3VO.

Don W4VQA and Art will begin setting the station on Friday afternoon starting at 1400.

Art reports AO-40 rises Saturday at 0450L with the passbands on and squint not bad and getting better. Squint is best at 1100 local, and it is up and usable until 1630 Saturday. So we should hit it hard from 1400 to 1630 when FD starts. There should be ample time to practice before 1400.

On Sunday, it’s back at 0330L (no sleep Sat nite!) with low squints and passbands on. Squint hits 20 at 1100 local so we have 8 good hours to work it on Sunday morning.

Art will bring his screened tent as we used last year. If you are coming to watch or help out, bring you own chair as these become scarce. There will be food /meals Saturday and Sunday for a fee. The highlight will be Bob KC3VO’s BBQ ribs!

Photos from last year’s Field Day are here.

Look forward to seeing you.

Ed N2EC

AO-40 Demonstration at the Amsat table - Manassas Hamfest June 1, 2003

 After hearing Carasat’s report of our very successful Field Day 2002 activities at the local Amsat meeting held at the Goddard Visitor Center on May 4, 2003, Art W4ART, a founding member of Cara and the Treasurer of AMSAT, requested Carasat to put on a demo of our AO-40 equipment at the Amsat table at the Manassas Hamfest.

The AO-40 pass Sunday morning ended at about 9:15 am. That meant we had to be there early. So we left Columbia about 5:45 am. We set up our equipment just outside the building where the Amsat table was located. Photos of our activity that day are here. It was not until about 8:40 am that we were finally set up to hear the bird and we received the beacon with a strong signal. Dave W2LNX loaned us his G3RUH S-band dish that provided an excellent reception.

The good news was we head a great deal of traffic from AO-40. Stations included Puerto Rico; Berlin, Germany; a French speaking station.

The bad news was we could not hear ourselves and thus we could not make any QSOs. Part of the problem was Art N3OY’s laptop, which had all of configured software, suddenly decided not to work. We had Bernie K3BAZ’s laptop, but his satellite software was not yet optimized and precious time was used in checking and modifying the configuration of the software programs.

The other good news was our show and tell permitted those who walked by the Amsat table to hear AO-40’s downlink and to see a working AO-40 station. We believe there was an increase in Amsat memberships sold as people came by and heard AO-40 and our explanation of the equipment.

AMSAT-DC ANNUAL MEETING AND SPACE SEMINAR

Sunday, May 4, 2003. Report to be posted. Carasat had 2 speakers.

We met Saturday April 12, 2003, to first add a patch antenna and downconverter to our 2.4 ghz parabolic grid dish to complete our AO-40 antenna. Click here to see how Art did the construction. We then mounted it on the boom of our new (to us) antenna stand and tried to listen to AO-40’s beacon. Click here to see our set up and operation. Unfortunately we did not hear anything.  While all this construction and set up was going on we lowered John W3GJN’s vertical antenna and added stretch straps to secure the cable to the vertical antenna. Click here to see the few photos of  this subproject. We are working on a set of photos of our equipment. Click here for what we have assembled so far. At our next meeting (to be scheduled) we should be in position to do our set up in less than 45 minutes so as to spend the rest of the time operating.

We met Saturday April 5, 2003, to test out our Army surplus antenna stand that we obtained at the BARC hamfest. Click here to see photos of our activity with the antenna stand.

We purchased a Unitrac 2000 controller for the rotator for the Az-El antennas. The web page for this controller is at
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/lamontd/
This will permit the automatic control of the antennas and the radio tuning so as to take into account the doppler effect. This will be tested soon.

The December 2002 issue of QST has the results: the station with the highest score was W3AO with 33,442 points. This station is a joint effort of the Potomac Valley Radio Club and CARA. See page 103 for a photo of the antenna farm we used at Field Day. For a report on the CARASAT effort for Field Day click here which includes photos taken during the event, a list of all the contacts we made on voice and cw,  and the equipment we used.

For more information about CARASAT see Ed Cabic at the next Cara meeting.

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