[aprssig] A great APRS day in the Satellite Lab!

[Robert Bruninga]

A great APRS day in the Satelliite Lab!

Not only did we hear ISS, and Command up PCSAT, but also on
today's last day of class, we distributed 5 LABsats throught the
campus in undisclosed locations hanging on strings so that the
students had to use Telemetry, and Command, and then the imager
and sun/magnetometer sensors to align the comm links and then
activate the on-board cameras to see where they were.

They were scored on how well they could align their best solar
panel to the sun, and how well they could change attitude to use
the camera. 

The first link on this LABsat web page has this final 4 page lab
(a word doc): www.aprs.org/labsats.html that summarizes the
experiments.

Just a lot of fun on the last day of class.  Over the semester
they incrementally assemble various components of these TNC
based satellites going through 33 lab periods and exercises
culminating in this final operations scenario.

The icing on the cake was that today was also the first day of
PCSAT return to full sun, and also hearing the ISS crew on voice
all during the same lab.  But PCSAT did not hold, and died on
the next orbit for the next class.  We will resume restoration
attempts tomorrow.

These LABsats use nothing more than a KPC-3 TNC for all
telemetry, command and control, and an $88 Alinco HT for comms.
They use $75 2.4 GHz TV cameras for their imaging experiments. 

Bob, WB4APR
USNA Satellite Lab