UBARoyal Belgian Amateur Radio Union

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Photo: Couloir

Morse code on the Sky



On December 12/13 FITSAT-1 will be using its optical LED beacon to flash a message in Morse Code over the USA and Europe which may be visible to the unaided eye although binoculars are advised. NIWAKA's high power LEDs will be driven with more than 200W pulses to produce extremely bright flashes. The LEDs were successfully tested on November 26 and it had been planned to flash the LEDs on Christmas Eve, however, the FITSAT-1 website reports that there will be a Full Moon that night which would make the signals impossible to see. The plan is now to activate the LEDs on:


LED Start Time
(UTC)
LED End Time
(UTC)
Duration
(min)
Region
13 December 2012 - 22:10:30 13 December 2012 - 22:14:30 2 or 4* Europe
2 min: UK, Ireland, Belgium,
Netherlands, Germany,
North of France.
4 min: Czech Republic, Austria,
Switzerland, Hungary, Slovenia,
North of Italy.

* four minutes on positive results during tests on December 11 over Japan.

AMSAT-DL have released this information showing visibility from Bochum in Germany, using keplerian elements of day 342.23099187: 2012 Dec 13 [Thu] FitSat-1 – Bochum.

UTC Az El km km/s
2207 282.975 0.215 2255 -6.9048
2208 281.375 4.401 1842 -6.8538
2209 278.698 9.886 1434 -6.7099
2210 273.556 18.052 1041 -6.3217
2211 260.746 32.379 0692 -5.0820
2212 213.023 52.361 0492 -0.8819
2213 148.787 38.260 0612 4.3289
2214 130.898 21.281 0937 6.1087
2215 124.461 11.877 1322 6.6334
2216 121.284 5.839 1726 6.8210
2217 119.431 1.372 2138 6.8900

The FITSAT-1 CubeSat, was developed by students at the Fukuoka Institute of Technology (FIT) in Japan. As well as the optical LED experiment the satellite carries several amateur radio payloads: a CW beacon on 437.250 MHz, a telemetry beacon on 437.445 MHz and a high-speed data downlink on 5840.0 MHz.