[amsat-bb] FASTRAC Digipeating Announcement

[Sebastián Muñoz Toro]

All,

The FASTRAC satellites have been in operation for more than a year and the
team has been able to get a
lot of data from them, in great part due to the amazing support from the
amateur radio community. Over the last
month the team noticed that one of FASTRAC-1’s on board microcontrollers
which controls one of the experiments
has not been booting up correctly. The team has done everything possible to
correct this issue apart from turning it
off which can only happen if the batteries fall below an specific charge
level. Since the satellites have been power
positive throughout this whole year the only way this can happen is if the
satellites transmit more often. Given that
one of FASTRAC goals has always been to eventually provide a platform for
amateur radio enthusiasts to use after
the primary mission was over, the team has decided to open up FASTRAC-1 to
the amateur radio community with
the hope as more people use it to digipeat through the satellite, the
battery levels will diminish and cause a hard reset
of the microcontrollers on board. The satellite will be configured so that
amateur radio operators can use it
beginning on Friday Dec 2 at 10:00 AM CST. Starting on this date people
will be able to digipeat through the
satellites. The call sign and frequencies of the satellite are summarized
below and an example of
digipeating through the satellite is also shown in below. To increase the
chances of causing a hard reset, it is
requested that as many amateur radio enthusiasts try to digipeat through
the satellite on the weekend of Dec 10. If
you are successful at digipeating through the satellites or have any
problems doing so please let us know at
fastracsats at gmail.com, through our Facebook page (
www.facebook.com/fastracsats) or through the forums on our
website (
http://fastrac.ae.utexas.edu/for_radio_operators/users/phpBB3/index.php).


*Frequency Information for FASTRAC-1*

   - FASTRAC-1 “Sara Lily” Downlink Frequency:  437.345 MHz
   - FASTRAC-1 “Sara Lily” Uplink Frequency (1200 or 9600 baud):  145.825
   MHz
   - FASTRAC-1 “Sara Lily” Satellite Call Sign:  FAST1

*Example of Digipeating through FAST1 *

   - cmd: c CALLSIGN via fast1
   - cmd: KE5DTW>CALLSIGN,FAST1/1: <<C>>:
   - CALLSIGN>KE5DTW,FAST1*/1: <UA>:
   - *** CONNECTED to CALLSIGN VIA FAST1

Here the example shows KE5DTW (UT Austin Ground Station) digipeating
through FAST1 to connect to CALLSIGN. CALLSIGN represents an arbitrary
callsign and should be replaced with the callsign of the
station with whom a connection is being attempted. The above example is
based on a Kantronics KPC9612+ TNC.

For a PDF version of the announcement please go to the following link:
http://fastrac.ae.utexas.edu/FASTRAC_Digipeating_Announcement.pdf

Thanks a lot,

THE FASTRAC TEAM

-- 
Sebastián Muñoz Toro
FASTRAC Student Program Manager
Graduate Research Assistant
The University of Texas at Austin
Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics
Satellite Design Laboratory
email: sebastian_munoz at mail.utexas.edu
phone:  +1 (512) 471-5144
cell:  +1 (512) 825-3857