SPACE!

FUNcube-1 is alive, flying high and singing loud!

Mike DK3WN has posted this picture of the transponder in operation:

FUNcube-1 as received by Mike DK3WN

The launch date for FUNcube-1 has finally been announced.
The date to keep an eye on is November 21st 2013, 07:10:11 UTC

Details can be found on the FUNcube website, ISL launch blog and a big countdown clock at the AMSAT-NL website

The video matrix is working!

hardware: Wouter Weggelaar PA3WEG
Software: Martijn Moeling PB0NER
Inspiration: Herman Blom PB0AHX

After four years, FUNcube-1 is finally ready for launch end of November 2013, from Yasny launch base, Orenburg Oblast, Russia.

The final glue was applied by team mate Gerard Aalbers at the launch site on 23th of October. We will now have to wait for launch.

Chartered Antonov AN-12
Image credit: ISC Kosmotras

FUNcube-1 was flown in one big shipment from The Netherlands to Russia with a chartered Antonov AN-12 aircraft. Thanks to careful planning by ISIS/ISL, the shipment passed customs inspection without any problems.

More information can be found on the FUNcube website and on the ISILaunch03 weblog

ISIPODs containing Triton-1 (left) and HiNcube, FUNcube-1 and ZACUBE-1 (right) Image credit: Gerard Aalbers – FUNcube team

ISILaunch03 POD01 team – Gerard Aalbers on the left. Image credit: ISIS – Arthur Overlack

The postman made me happy!
The BATC DTX1 arrived on my doorstep from the UK. It is working just fine and happily streaming video.

To bed…

Yesterday, 28th of September, the first dutch amateur satellite day “Interessedag Amateursatellieten” was held.

The idea came from Ivo PA1IVO, Rob PE1ITR and Henk PA3GUO and was also discussed in the train back from the AMSAT-UK colloquium between myself and Ivo. Now, finally after some years, it happened!

The program can be found at Ivo’s website

We had presentations and hands-on sessions during the day, and some 50 people attended the lecture sessions.
Maybe many more watched the live demos on the parking lot using Ivo’s portable setup as one station and Henks home-brew antennas and my IC-910h in the back of his car as the second station.

I have presented on FUNcube and AMSAT-NL. The FUNcube presentation can be found here

We also made some QSO’s through the FUNcube-1 EM (Engineering Model) transponder.

More to follow! If you have images or video from the day, please contact me: amsat.org, pa3weg@

The CanSat launch day was a partial succes.
Everything that had to go up, did go up. But due to various weather delays and some delays out of control of the CanSat organisation, we could not launch the 4th CanSat launcher. We had to send home five extremely disappointed school teams, and that is a very hard thing to do. They will fly on an additional launch day later this year.

The 3 CanSat launches that did go up were all very successful. All hatches opened and all CanSats ejected from the rockets.

Due to myself being occupied helping the teams, tracking the CanSats and keeping the power grid going, I could not take pictures of the actual launch. Now cleaning the equipment @ home