This popped up this morning regarding an old military satellite that likes to wake up with the sun and talk to Europe on ham bands, uninvited. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/31/us_navy_satellite_pcsat_no_44_goes_rogue/
Maybe the brazillian radio pirates will take control of this satellite as they have with the obsolete US navy Fleetsatcom on 255.550 another defunct military geo-stationary satellite gone to waste. We hams could do with a geo-stationary sat or two dont you think!
Wouldn't the use of QSY technique, and VFO activation on the part of the ham community solve this problem? Oh No! ! We have always used this frequency!
Take a look at the tracking and story: SAT Tracking: http://www.satview.org/?sat_id=26931U&cat=amateur AMSAT: http://www.amsat.org/?page_id=3159 Webpage: http://www.aprs.org/pcsat.html
The cited article blows the issue out of proportion, unfortunately. PCSat-1 (NO-44) has been in orbit for 14 years, and - when it gets enough sunlight on its solar panels - still works as an APRS digipeater on 145.825 MHz. The issue is how this satellite transmits on the North American APRS frequency of 144.390 MHz when it powers on. This problem was described on the AMSAT-BB mailing list yesterday (30 July), in a post by British ham Trevor M5AKA: http://amsat.org/pipermail/amsat-bb/2015-July/054329.html Bob Bruninga WB4APR of the US Naval Academy (also the creator of APRS, and the driving force behind a few satellites built by the US Naval Academy that have operated on amateur frequencies, including NO-44) replied to the original post within an hour, explaining how this satellite operates when it "wakes up": http://amsat.org/pipermail/amsat-bb/2015-July/054330.html Earlier today (31 July), WB4APR updated the PCSat-1/NO-44 web page with a message directed to European hams: This "military satellite" was built to operate within the amateur bands, licensed by the FCC as an amateur satellite. It is available for amateur use, provided it has enough power to hear and retransmit packets on 145.825 MHz. I have used it to retransmit my location, and to make some keyboard-to-keyboard QSOs with stations across the continental USA in the past few months. It is not like the military communications satellites operating around 240-300 MHz, well outside the amateur bands, which have been used by radio pirates for a long time. WB4APR has said in the past that the satellite can be controlled, but it is a matter of timing - the satellite must be powered up, and a command station must be able to send the commands to the satellite before others transmit to the satellite. The satellite's beacons are periodically picked up by some of the same Internet gateway stations that listen for the ISS and other activity on 145.825 MHz (the recently-launched NO-84 also has a 145.825 MHz digipeater that is occasionally on), and that activity can be seen at: http://pcsat.aprs.org/ Look for the packets that start with W3ADO-1 to see the beacons from NO-44, as opposed to those that start with PSAT or PSAT-1 - packets from the new NO-84 satellite. 73!
and here I thought resistance was related to PIE! sorry for the digression, but I had never realized that V'Ger was related to Borg before looking into it before I posted! At any rate, I think Patrick mentioned in another thread that NO-44 was kind of dead until it's orbit changes later this year (or later this summer? can't recall)... in other words when there is enough sunlight during it's NA passes.
When I look at http://aprs.fi it's not visible there so I see it as a minor problem that it's sometimes active. It could have been a lot worse than being active on APRS. In this case it's more of a minor mishap. Sooner or later it will go away.
This is my point, exactly. NO-44 has an occasional beacon, which is picked up and shown on sites like: http://pcsat.aprs.org/ that I referenced earlier, and also: http://aprs.fi/?c=raw&call=W3ADO-1&limit=1000&view=normal This was blown out of proportion, and a non-ham web site ran with the article, deficiencies and all. I enjoy reading The Register for its I.T.-related articles, and it's unfortunate there wasn't more information gathered before it ran this article. WB4APR has admitted the error in having the 144.390 MHz transmitter on the satellite. And, as one of the earliest posters in this thread mentioned, there is the VFO knob on the radio as one way to deal with the occasional transmissions from NO-44 - even with the 2m band being smaller in Europe than in other parts of the world. 73! 73!
There appears to be a virus attached to the link in the UK Register article. Caution be advised! 73, Al VE3NXP
I bet if some Group would start issuing QSL cards and Awards to the Hams that hear the satellite from the most Grids...SOTAs etc. then they would all qsy to keep the frequency clear....for the wallpaper chasers.......LOL.....73...wa4ukx
