AMSAT 50 Year Anniversary Challenge

Data Reception from 50 spacecraft

In 2019 AMSAT was 50. In true amateur radio style there was a competition to work 50 stations, or 50 grid squares or 50 officers of AMSAT. That type of thing. It was fun, lots of people took part, but truthfully I don't operate that much. So for AMSAT's 50th I decided to do my own thing and set out to demodulate and understand telemetry from 50 different spacecraft. I wanted to decode and examine the data in 2019, but that proved impossible with the amount of spare time I had available, so now its a multi-year project.

Anything from 2019 onwards will "count". So I can't dig back in the log and claim I have UO-14 data on a 3.5 inch disk. If I want data from UO-11 for example, then I have to point my antenna at it and confirm that it is still bleeping away. I also need to dig through the bytes somewhat and see what is going on.

There are no real rules for my self imposed competition. Multipliers are available for different bands and modes of course. There are points for style. I will see how far I get.

I am capturing my progress in the "log" below, as it were, and in a series of blog posts talking about how I did it and what I managed to find for each spacecraft. There will be an emphasis on Amateur spacecraft for sure, this is about AMSAT after all, but any signal from space is fair game. Perhaps not watching Direct-TV unless I can work out a telemetry sub carrier, but you get the idea.

Maybe you have done this yourself? I know some have made a huge contribution, such as Mike DK3WN. If you have had a go yourself or have thoughts on how I should proceed, then post in the comments below.

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