[amsat-bb] AMSAT pass prediction page.

[Tom Schuessler]

I asked this question maybe a year ago at a point after the rehab of the
hacked AMSAT web site but now that sufficient time has elapsed I feel as one
who wants to promote AMSAT and Amateur Radio Satellite activities, I have to
bring up again.

There are still, this far down the path issues with the AMSAT Pass
prediction page that need to be addressed.  First one should be easy.  The
pass prediction page was resurrected by reusing old code and linking to it
from the new WordPress main page all well and good.  Problem is that all the
links on the pass prediction page that should link back other parts of the
site, including clicking on the banner picture at the top are broken and
should be restored.

Another concern is the actual satellite drop down list.  The contents of
which have not bee updated in a while save for the inclusion of AO-73 at the
top.  Ray Hoad, WA5QGD does a yeoman's job of keeping up with the orbital
elements from various sources each week and sending out a great composit
listing.  Since I believe this distribution is the source for the data that
does the predictions for web users, it should be fairly easy to parse the
list of two line elements and regenerate the drop down list on a weekly
basis.  As a newbie back in 2010 to the world of Amateur Radio satellites, I
used the on-line prediction tool quite often and think that it needs to be
considered as an important part of our promotion efforts.  Thus it needs to
be current.

Lest you all think I am just ragging at our AMSAT NA web guys for not being
current.  I found it interesting to find that on the AMSAT-UK web site, they
have a page that is a listing of dopler.SQF values for use in SatPC32.  Cool
I thought, guidance from the source on FunCube frequencies for use in this
wonderful tracking program.  Go to
http://amsat-uk.org/satellites/doppler-sqf-2/ and see if I am mistaken but I
bet you will not find either AO-73 or FunCube-1 listed in the file.

73 to all

Tom Schuessler
2713 Lake Gardens Drive
Irving, Texas  75060
972-986-7456
214-403-1464 (Cell)
n5hyp at arrl.net