{"id":768,"date":"2004-01-22T12:05:17","date_gmt":"2004-01-22T17:05:17","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2004-01-22T12:05:17","modified_gmt":"2004-01-22T17:05:17","slug":"2-amateur-satellites-to-launch-in-2004","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=768","title":{"rendered":"2 AMATEUR SATELLITES TO LAUNCH IN 2004"},"content":{"rendered":"

AMSAT-NA President Robin Haighton, VE3FRH, says he’s looking forward to the 2004 launches of AMSAT-NA’s ECHO satellite
\nhttp:\/\/www.amsat.org\/amsat\/sats\/echo\/index.html <\/a> and AMSAT-India’s VUsat (also known as “HAMSAT”). In his last President’s Letter for 2003, Haighton reported that ECHO is passing final integration and testing with flying colors.
\n
\n“I am looking forward to the end of March, when we expect the ECHO launch to take place,” he said. With less than three months until the anticipated launch, AMSAT-NA still needs to raise more than $60,000 for the launch campaign.<\/p>\n

The new microsat-class satellite is undergoing integration and testing at SpaceQuest in Fairfax, Virginia. Jim White, WD0E, and Mike Kingery, KE4AZN, are heading up the integration process. Among its other capabilities, AO-ECHO will enable satellite voice communication using handheld FM transceivers.<\/p>\n

The satellite will incorporate two UHF transmitters, each running from 1 to 8 W and capable of simultaneous operation, four VHF receivers and a multiband, multimode receiver capable of operation on the 10 meter, 2 meter, 70 cm and 23 cm bands. ECHO will feature V\/U, L\/S and HF\/U operational configurations, with V\/S, L\/U and HF\/S also possible. FM voice and various digital modes–including PSK31 on a 10-meter SSB uplink–also will be available.<\/p>\n

Haighton reported that VUsat http:\/\/www.amsat-india.org\/official\/vusat.htm <\/a> experienced some problems in testing but these are being resolved. A VUsat launch could come as soon as late summer. VUsat will incorporate two linear transponders, with a UHF uplink and VHF downlink and CW, USB and FM capabilities.<\/p>\n

“An exciting year is ahead,” said Haighton, who’s already announced that he does not intend to seek another term at the AMSAT-NA helm when his current term expires in October. By then, he said, ECHO should be in orbit, but, paraphrasing Yogi Berra, he added, “It ain’t up and working till it’s up and working.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AMSAT-NA President Robin Haighton, VE3FRH, says he’s looking forward to the 2004 launches of AMSAT-NA’s ECHO satellite http:\/\/www.amsat.org\/amsat\/sats\/echo\/index.html and AMSAT-India’s VUsat (also known as “HAMSAT”). In his last President’s Letter… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":612599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ARRL"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/612599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}