Wednesday, December 19, 2012

FITSAT-1 beacon reception 437.250

FITSAT-1 (NIWAKA).
Today 19/12/2012 at 18:17z on 437.250 received the beacon starting with "HI DE NIWAKA" and continous with varius telemetry data in CW mode.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mk0bab4w6upyyy1/FITSAT-1%20NIWAKA.wav
You can find more information in this web page:
http://www.fit.ac.jp/~tanaka/fitsat.shtml
This FITSAT-1 was deployed from ISS at 15:44z on 4th October 2012.

 
Has also a flashing LED and when the LEDS are ON, acording to program you can see the flashing LEDs write CW messages in the night SKY. The NIWAKA's high power LEDs will be driven with more than 200W pulses to produce extremely bright flashes.These, will be observable by the unaided eye or small binoculars.
 
The FITSAT-1 (Niwaka) body is made by a section of 10 cm square aluminium pipe!!! Also NIWAKA carry a mounted neodymium magnet to force it to always point to magnetic North like a compass.
You can also try to listen on 437.445 Mhz Packet 1200bps AX.25  or to see Picture data 115.2 Kbps FSK on 5.840 Ghz ans of course to see the LEDS flashing as a moving star.
Timothy HB9FFH made a telemetry decoder for FITSAT-1.
It is available here:
http://carpcomm.com/satellite/fitsat1
73 to all
Spiros - SV8CS