[amsat-bb] AO-16 status update

[Mark L. Hammond]

Hello all,

There are reports at http://oscar.dcarr.org/ that AO-16 has gone silent.  Should this be the case, there is no cause for alarm.  Over the last month AO-16 has gone from full illumination (0 minutes of eclipse) to over 250 minutes of eclipse.  Since the bird has no fancy housekeeping code running, a reasonable explanation is that the battery voltage dropped low enough to put the bird into a protected (and silent) mode.

Over the next few days I'll work at collecting telemetry and restoring the voice mode operations of AO-16.  Please refrain from transmitting to the satellite until further notice.

On behalf of the AO-16 Command Team,

Mark L. Hammond  [N8MH]