[amsat-bb] FUNcube-1's Birthday

[Jim Heck]

Hi Folks,

It seems amazing to us that FUNcube-1 - AO73, was launched nearly one year
ago, in fact at 07:10 UTC on 21 Nov 2013. The very first signals were
received by ZS1LS in South Africa at 07:37 UTC and he was even able to
upload the resulting data to the Warehouse so the results could be seen
immediately.    
 
 We are extremely  happy to say that, since then, the satellite has been
performing very satisfactorily, the battery voltage doesn't drop below 8
volts, and becomes fully charged within about 7 - 10 minutes after
re-entering sunlight from eclipse.  
 
  Thus, on 21 Nov 2014, we will be celebrating the satellite's first
birthday. To mark the occasion, we will be activating the transponder
earlier than normal - late on Thursday 20 Nov 2014, so that it will be
available for use during the whole of Friday. So please make as many
contacts as possible through the transponder during Friday, FUNcube's actual
birthday. You are invited to make a note of any stations worked on this day,
or any other comments on the FUNcube Forum. Please use the existing
"FUNcube-1's Birthday" topic, under the Welcome heading. The URL of the
Forum is http://forum.funcube.org.uk/index.php.
 
 Please also remember the '73 on 73' competition which is kindly being
organised by Paul Stoetzer N8HM. See
http://amsat-uk.org/2014/08/18/73-on-73-award-announcement/ for more
details.
 
  We would like to take this opportunity of thanking all of our 'users',
both those who download  telemetry and forwarding it to the warehouse, and
of course, all users of the transponder. This telemetry data is invaluable,
both as an educational resource and to enable us to see how the spacecraft
systems are performing and surviving. So far we have collected almost 400MB
of unique data via stations from all around the world.
 
  Of course we are hoping that the satellite continues to function nominally
for several  more  years to come even though we may never reach AO7's
record!
 
73s AMSAT-UK and AMSAT-NL