[jamsat-news:1849] ANS-271 AMSAT Weekly Bulletins

AMSAT NEWS SERVICE

ANS-271

ANS is a free, weekly, news and information service of AMSAT North
America, The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation. ANS reports on
the activities of a worldwide group of Amateur Radio operators who
share an active interest in designing, building, launching and
communicating through analog and digital Amateur Radio satellites.

In this edition:
*  AMSAT Senior Advisor Group Established
*  AMSAT Assistant to the President announced
*  Space Symposium and Annual Meeting Update
*  AMSAT.ORG servers recover from outage
*  Area Coordinator report from EM17 KS
*  Logging satellite contacts via ARRL's Logbook of the World
*  U.S. Space Weather Service in deep trouble
*  This Week's News in Brief


SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-271.01
AMSAT Senior Advisor Group Established

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 271.01 From AMSAT HQ
SILVER SPRING, MD.  September 28, 2003
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-271.01

I am pleased to announce that  the following appointments are effective
immediately, in recognition of  long service to the Board of Directors and
the AMSAT membership, the following long term AMSAT members are appointed as
"Senior Advisors".

Bill Tynan        W3XO
Perry Klein      W3PK
Dick Daniels    W4PUJ
Jan King          W3GEY
Ray Soifer        W2RS
Keith Baker      KB1SF

They may be contacted by their normal E-Mail Address or collectively by
advisors@amsat.org

Their individual and collective experience with AMSAT, most of it since  the
early days of  AMSAT's foundation, is such that their value in remaining
active with the organization cannot be overstated.  Their new title, while
being honorary, will I hope signify the high esteem in which we hold these
individuals. I am sure that the current and future Board or Directors will
avail themselves of  the opportunity to seek their advice on many future
occasions.

The Senior Advisor designation is in addition to any other  position  that
they may hold  as AMSAT Officers.

[ANS thanks Robin, VE3FRH, for the above information]

/EX


SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-271.02
AMSAT Assistant to the President announced

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 271.02 From AMSAT HQ
SILVER SPRING, MD.  September 28, 2003
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-271.02

I am pleased to announce that Steve Diggs, W4EPI, has agreed to become an
assistant to the President.  Steve's initial duty will be to assist at the
Board of Directors meeting.  He will develop a complete list of Action Items
for the Board members and a listing of the resolutions of the Board together
with the disposition of the resolutions.

[ANS thanks Robin, VE3FRH, for the above information]

/EX


SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-271.03
Space Symposium and Annual Meeting Update

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 271.03 From AMSAT HQ
SILVER SPRING, MD.  September 28, 2003
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-271.03

Robin, VE3FRH, reports that he is pleased to advise that the Airport Marriot
in Toronto has agreed to keep our block reservation open until October 1st.
AMSAT-NA has already exceeded our minimum Quota with the Hotel, thus our
major expenses with the Hotel have been met but we still have a few more
rooms available.

The Hotel Number to call is 1-800-905-2811 from both the USA and Canada.
For overseas +1- 416-674- 9400 make your reservation as a part of  the
"AMSAT" block
Cost - estimated at $86.87 US actually $119.00 Cdn - Both + Takes.

The prize list is still growing, and includes
An FT-847 HF and Satellite Radio from YAESU
An IC 910H satellite Radio from  ICOM
Several Gift Certificates from KENWOOD
A  BIRD Watt Meter Model 43 complete with one element.

Plus prizes from
AMSAT
ARRL
CQ & CQ VHF
NEMAL
NCG
KANTRONICS
DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS INC

More Prizes are promised from many other significant organizations.

Don't forget to register with Martha.

[ANS thanks Robin, VE3FRH, for the above information]

/EX


SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-271.04
AMSAT.ORG servers recover from outage

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 271.04 From AMSAT HQ
SILVER SPRING, MD.  September 28, 2003
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-271.04

As I'm sure most of you noticed, the AMSAT.ORG system was more or
less broken starting around 1903 UTC on Friday, 19 September. I'm sorry
for the inconvenience. To the best of my knowledge, all systems have
now been restored to normal operation as of about 2340 UTC on Tuesday,
23 September.

The problem began with the installation of an emergency security
update to protect the system against a recently-discovered potential
attack. Security updates like these are installed all the time on all
well-administered Unixish systems, and help to keep the system under
control and working smoothly. This time, something went wrong, and
the resulting updated system was not able to run the email program
(sendmail) that handles all incoming and outgoing email. All mail
aliases, mailing lists, and email servers (like majordomo)
immediately stopped working.

The next day at 16:45 UTC, sendmail was fixed and mail alias relaying
was restored. However, in the process of fixing sendmail, some other
things went wrong, which prevented the mailing lists, majordomo, the
mail alias creation and modification web pages, and several other
things from working. Incidentally, this also prevented me personally
from accessing my own email or having any remote access to help fix
the system. Between me being locked out (and out of town) and the
sysadmin being mostly unavailable over the weekend (and busy once the
workweek resumed), each step toward getting this mess straightened
out took a lot longer than usual.

In theory, the updating scheme we use has now been fixed and future
updates should go smoothly. In practice, I'm keeping my fingers
crossed for next time.

Messages that were sent during the outages were either bounced back
to the sender or just plain lost. If you sent messages to mailing
lists on amsat.org and didn't see them come back, you may want to
send them again. If in doubt, you can check the archives at
http://www.amsat.org/amsat/archive/index.html to see if the message
was processed. The archive contains exactly those messages that went
out to the mailing list subscribers.

Your mailing list subscriptions on amsat.org have not been changed.
They should be working now.

If you subscribe to mailing lists from other systems using your
amsat.org mail alias address, you may have been automatically dropped
from those lists during the outage. You can probably just
resubscribe. I urge you to resubscribe using your direct email
address, if at all possible, to avoid this problem in the future.

If you find anything still broken, please let me know by email at
kb5mu@amsat.org

[ANS thanks Paul, KB5MU, for the above information]

/EX


SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-271.05
Area Coordinator report from EM17 KS

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 271.05 From AMSAT HQ
SILVER SPRING, MD.  September 28, 2003
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-271.05

The weekly CCARC VHF AMSAT Satellite net for 8/24/03, NCS was Greg N0ZHE
There was 11 check-ins to the net, with SAT OPS reporting 35 contact made
through the week of August 18-24, Satellites reported worked was AO-7 and
AO-40

SAT OPS reporting this week was: John KA0OXY, Bill W0OQC, Greg N0ZHE

DX contacts reported off AO-40 into the following countries:
Russia
Indonesia
Italy
Mali
Germany
Czech Rep.
Netherlands
France
Sicily Island

Other topics talked about on the net ranged from:
UO-14
UO-22
ISS
AO-40
mods done on Grid dishes for operating on AO-40.
Bill W0OQC going to start working on his 7.5ft dish for AO-40.
design for a harness for the 14 element cross arrow antenna.
the new FEC program for coping tlm off AO-40.

For more information on our local VHF AMSAT satellite net check out:
http://www.havilandtelco.com/~gregwycoff/chat.htm

[ANS thanks Greg, N0ZHE, for the above information]

/EX


SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-271.06
Logging satellite contacts via ARRL's Logbook of the World

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 271.06 From AMSAT HQ
SILVER SPRING, MD.  September 28, 2003
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-271.06

ARRL's Logbook of the World (LoTW) system is a repository of log records
submitted by users from around the world. When both participants in a QSO
submit matching QSO records to LoTW, the result is a QSL that can be used
for ARRL award credit.

To minimize the chance of fraudulent submissions to LoTW, all QSO records
must be digitally signed using a digital certificate obtained from ARRL.
Obtaining such a certificate requires verification of the licensee's
identity either through mail verification (US) or inspection by ARRL of
required documentation (non-US).

Software developed by ARRL can be used to convert a log file (in ADIF or
Cabrillo file format) into a file of digitally signed QSO data, ready for
submission to LoTW.

LoTW began operation on September 15, 2003. Many details, as well as the
required Trusted-QSL (TQSL) software are available at
http://www.arrl.org/lotw/

Below is some information specific to entering satellite QSO data for use by
LoTW.

BAND field should show the satellite uplink band
BAND_RX field should show the satellite downlink band

Both the uplink and downlink bands of the two QSO records (yours and the
other station's) must match in order for LoTW to connect the two into a
"QSL" record. Also, LoTW infers the satellite mode from the two band fields,
and any future mode-specific awards will take notice of that.

FREQ and FREQ_RX fields can also be used in addition to or in place of BAND
and BAND_RX for the uplink/downlink.

The FREQ fields are used to infer the BAND fields if the BAND fields are not
present. Otherwise, the FREQ field values are ignored. If BAND is provided,
the FREQ fields need not even be consistent with the BAND fields: the BAND
fields are authoritative. If neither FREQ_RX nor BAND_RX is provided,
BAND_RX is assumed to be the same as BAND (that is, both uplink and downlink
are assumed to be in the same band).

Since the SAT_MODE field is not used by LoTW. The only way to record the
transponder mode is to use the BAND and BAND_RX fields.

PROP_MODE field should be set to SAT
SAT_NAME field should indicate the satellite name in the format cc-nn
(i.e. AO-40, FO-29)

The specific list of satellites can be viewed in the TQSL program's ADIF
editor. Satellites that aren't on that list will not be accepted by LoTW.

[ANS thanks Jon, KE3Z, for the above information]

/EX


SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-271.07
U.S. Space Weather Service in deep trouble

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 271.07 From AMSAT HQ
SILVER SPRING, MD.  September 28, 2003
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-271.07

SUMMARY
For Fiscal Year 2004, starting October 1, 2003, the House Appropriations
Bill for Commerce, Justice, and State continues Space Environment
Center's funding at $5.2 M (a reduction of 40% below the FY02 level).
Worse, the FY04 Senate Appropriations Bill zeroes Space Environment
Center and all space weather in NOAA, so services, data and
observations, and archiving would all disappear if the final
appropriation is at the Senate level.  At the House funding level,
starting October 1 SEC will rapidly lose about half its staff,
negatively affecting its ability to serve the Nation with operational
products, data collection, and R&D.  Unless the appropriation level for
Space Environment Center is restored to the level of the President's
FY04 Budget Request, $8.3 million, the Nation's civilian space weather
service is in trouble.  At the President's requested funding level,
Space Environment Center can almost return to FY02 level of services,
data, and R&D.

BACKGROUND
NOAA's Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colorado, provides a range
of services to the Nation related to space weather phenomena.  Among
other activities, the Center is the unique provider of real-time
monitoring and forecasting of solar and geophysical events, it conducts
research in solar-terrestrial physics, and it develops techniques for
forecasting solar and geophysical disturbances.  That is, Space
Environment Center is the Nation's space weather service, monitoring and
predicting conditions in space, much as the National Weather Service
does for meteorological weather.

SEC jointly operates the Space Weather Operations Center with the U.S.
Air Force and serves as the national and world warning center for
disturbances that can affect people and equipment working in the space
environment.  It is the government's official source for alerts and
warnings of disturbances.  Customers include DoD, NASA, FAA, airlines,
operators of electric power grids, communicators, satellite operators,
the National Space Weather Program, and commercial providers of
value-added space weather services.  Partnering with researchers funded
by NSF, NASA, and the DoD, Space Environment Center is the place where
much of the nation's $100s of millions annual investment in the National
Space Weather Program and in space physics research is applied for the
benefit of commerce, defense, NASA spaceflight, and individual
taxpayers.

SEC's appropriation lines can be found in the Department of Commerce,
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Office of
Oceanic and Atmospheric Research portion of the Budget.

The Senate Appropriations Committee explains its termination of space
weather in NOAA in the Report accompanying its Commerce-Justice-State Bill
as follows.

Solar observation. - The "Atmospheric" in NOAA does not extend to the
astral.  Absolutely no funds are provided for solar observation.  Such
activities are rightly the bailiwick of the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration and the Air Force.

The full text of the Senate Report may be found at
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/T?&report=sr144&dbname=cp108&amp

Needless to say, there is no evidence to suggest that NASA and the Air
Force agree that one or the other, or both, should operate the Nation's
civilian space weather service.

CONCLUSION
Unless SEC's appropriation level is increased in Conference, the best
outlook is that Space Environment Center shrinks to less than half its
capability (House mark), and the worst is that space weather will
disappear from NOAA (Senate mark).  In this case, the Nation's space
weather service will have to be reconstituted in some other agency, at
greater cost and lesser capability, to meet the Nation's needs.

[ANS thanks Ernest Hildner, Director, SEC for the above information]


SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-271.08
This Week's News in Brief

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 271.08 From AMSAT HQ
SILVER SPRING, MD.  September 28, 2003
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-271.08

**     Ireland (EI) has removed the requirement for Amateur Radio (or
"Experimenters") license applicants to pass a Morse code examination. The
Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) announced September 15
that it took the action in line with the outcome of the World
Radiocommunication Conference 2003 (WRC-03), which removed the requirement
for prospective amateur licensees to prove Morse proficiency to operate
below 30 MHz. .  --ARRL

**    Singapore Amateur Radio Transmitting Society has been advised by the
nations Info-comm Development Authority that, as of the 15th of  September,
the requirement for a Morse code examination for High Frequency operating
privileges in Singapore has been removed.  As of the 16th of September all
current and future licenses became convertible to the Singapore General
Class with full High Frequency operating privileges.  --Newsline

**     Amateur Radio moonbounce (Earth-Moon-Earth, or EME) and microwave
history was made September 24 at 1400 UTC when Josef Sveceny, OK1UWA, and Al
Ward, W5LUA, completed the first-ever 24-GHz EME QSO between the Czech
Republic and the US.   --ARRL

**    Rohn Industries announces that it and five of its subsidiaries have
filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy relief in federal court.  Subject to the
provisions of the Bankruptcy Code, the September 16th filing means that Rohn
remains in possession of its properties and continues to operate its
business.  The company says that the objective of the Chapter 11 proceeding
is to maximize recovery to creditors by facilitating an orderly sale of its
assets.  --QRZ.com

**    A joint academic and industry team conducted the first known flight
test of a powered liquid-propellant aerospike engine this past Saturday, 20
September 2003. California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) and Garvey
Spacecraft Corporation, principal partners in the California Launch Vehicle
Education Initiative (CALVEIN), successfully launched their Prospector 2
(P-2) research vehicle using a 1,000 lbf LOX/ethanol aerospike engine
designed and developed by CSULB students.   --SpaceDaily

/EX

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73,
This weeks ANS Editor,
Lee McLamb, KU4OS, ku4os at amsat.org

----
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