[amsat-bb] ANDE Dec 15: cruising now below 215km

[Henk, PA3GUO]

ANDE is still doing fine, and many stations
grab the opportunity to make a quick APRS QSO
during the last days in space of our friend:

5P22U]APRS,ANDE-1*,qAO,PA3GUO::F1SRC :copy, 59 tnx
F1SRC]CQ,ANDE-1*,qAO,PA3GUO:73, 5P22U de F1SRC qsl qsl
5P22U]APRS,ANDE-1*,qAo,ON7EQ::G0ISW :59 qsl

Based on todays keppler set & NOVA, I took the
average height of ANDE and updated the plot:
http://home.vianetworks.nl/users/hamoen/pa3guo/ande_predict_pa3guo_15dec2007.jpg
Have look yourself on that graph, the end is coming soon !
Will ANDE celebrate its first birthdate / 1 year in SPACE ?
Who dares to make a prediction in the amsat-bb on which date ???

Then: this may be a false alarm, but for the first time
ever ANDE-2 did not execute a command properly.
After I set the telemetry rate to 10 seconds, it did
in reality take a period of 16 seconds:
20071215150027 : ANDE-2]BEACON,qAo,DL8DR:T#006,119,146,142,156,168,10101110,770
20071215150009 : ANDE-2]BEACON,qAo,DL8DR:T#005,130,048,051,048,213,11100001,770
20071215145953 : ANDE-2]BEACON,qAo,ON7EQ:T#004,118,175,112,001,030,00000010,770
20071215145937 : ANDE-2]BEACON,qAO,PA3GUO:T#003,119,146,142,156,167,10101110,641
First sign of heat ?

Well: maybe not, but click here and you see the TEMP trend:
http://www2.findu.com/cgi-bin/tele1.cgi?call=ANDE-1&cycle1=10&last=168&param=1&a=-.0009&b=0.5485&c=-29.8&label=Bat%20A%20Temperature&units=deg-C&range=15%2040
... it's going up slowly !

Why not join and provide the telemetry data yourself ?!
Just wake up ANDE and press now and then an APRS message,
only then telemetry will be transmitted by ANDE-1.
Simply IGate the data to (using ALogger or UIView) and
you make a difference !
U APRS VIA ANDE @145.825 is all you need !

Coming days I expect:
- ANDE to fly faster and faster
- ANDE to fly lower (more doppler effect)
- Kepplers to be updated at least every day
- Kepplers to become less accurate

Watch the health of ANDE 'live' here:
http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/andeTLM1.html

Or decode it yourself:
ANDE-1]BEACON,qAO,PA3GUO:T#012,009,176,121,002,131,00100010,515
Can be analysed with the software of Mike, DK3WN:
http://www.dk3wn.info/files/ande.zip

Who will receive the very last packet ?
Can your station grab each day a packet ?
Did you make an APRS QSO ?
Look at http://www.ande-deorbit.com for the AWARD.

The official ANDE central source of information is here:
http://web.usna.navy.mil/~bruninga/ande-ops.html

The 'live' traffic:
http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/pcsat.cgi

Stay tuned (better: tune in)- it's getting very exciting !

73 - Henk, PA3GUO
http://www.qsl.net/pa3guo (my own satellite weblog)