[amsat-bb] Re: recent AO-40 efforts?

[w7lrd@comcast.net]

Just dreaming-It's the year 2035 and 90 year old W7LRD, heard AO-40 for the first time in over thirty years.  Using very antique equipment, that was not controled by mental telepathy.
73 Bob


--
"if this were easy, everyone would be doing it"

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: "Don Ferguson" <kd6ire at sbcglobal.net> 

> Auke de Jong, 
> 
> I believe AO-40 was designed by AMSAT to not allow both sets of batteries to 
> be disconnected. We should have learned with AO-7 that every satellite 
> should be able to work on solar power alone as eventually all batteries will 
> fail. It is my understanding that the only chance we have is if the 
> batteries burn open some day in the future. 
> 
> Someone else my be able to correct my understanding if I have misunderstood 
> the AO-40 design. Hopefully those who designed the power system have moved 
> on and we now have some better insight. 
> 
> Don 
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: amsat-bb-bounces at amsat.org [mailto:amsat-bb-bounces at amsat.org] On 
> Behalf Of Auke de Jong, VE6PWN 
> Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2008 7:53 PM 
> To: AMSAT-BB 
> Subject: [amsat-bb] recent AO-40 efforts? 
> 
> I noticed that during the last period of documented efforts to recover AO-40 
> 4 years ago, there were promising results about hearing faint signals. By 
> my interpretation of those old reports, they basically confirmed that the 
> command receiver was working but could not get much else done with it. Now 
> that it has been officially silent for several years, has anyone tried to 
> send commands to it in order to disconnect the (shorted) battery banks via 
> the relays onboard? Given the changing sun-angles on the arrays and the 
> passage of time, as well as possible heating of certain onboard components 
> due to the constant supply of solar power to the shorted batteries, could 
> there be any possibility of (energizing) the battery-disconnect relays? I 
> presum e that they are in a fail-close arrangement, because if they were 
> fail-open, they should have already done-so due to the shunted power system. 
> Also, could the solar panels have fuses that have opened? could such fuses 
> be re-settable? 
> 
> I would be interested to hear what knowledge there exists about the present 
> status of AO-40, especially what "google" couldn't fetch. 
> 
> Auke de Jong 
> VE6PWN 
> DO33go 
> Edmonton, AB 
> 
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> 
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