Amateur Radio

Amateur Radio/Ham Radio
Amateur or Ham radio is a hobby enjoyed by people from diverse backgrounds all around the world. Amateurs communicate over the radio with other hams around the world, and experiment with new telecommunications technologies and ideas. BLUEsat is an amateur communications satellite, and it's primary mission is to provide the PACSAT packet store-and-forward service to the worldwide amateur community. Click here to find out more about this exciting hobby from the American Radio Relay League website.

Amateur Radio and BLUEsat
The BLUEsat groundstation is equipped with a Yaesu FT-847 satellite transceiver, which is capable of transmitting and receiving on the popular amateur bands. The groundstation has two Terminal Node Controllers (TNCs) for packet communications, a PacComm Sprint II, capable of 9.6 to 38.4 kbaud, and a Kantronics KPC-9612 which operates at 9600 and 1200 baud. Therefore, the groundstation is able to work traditional voice amateur stations and repeaters, terrestrial packet networks, and communicate with a multitude of analog and digital amateur satellites.

The BLUEsat antenna array on top of the Electrical Engineering building has a two cross-yagi antennas, each roughly 5m long, for use on the 2m and 70cm bands respectively. The array also includes a homemade 2.4 GHz dish. The array is mounted on an azimuth-elevation rotator, for the purpose of following LEO satellites as they streak across the sky. The rotator is controlled by software running on the groundstation PC, which also adjusts the uplink and downlink frequencies of the transceiver to compensate for doppler shift.

Amateur packet communication is the primary mission of BLUEsat, and uses the ubiquitous AX.25 protocol. You will be able to work BLUEsat using a Kantronics KPC-9612 or similiar 9600 baud TNC. BLUEsat uses the J-mode configuration like most modern amateur satellites. The AMSAT Satellite Status web page lists orbiting amateur satellites, their operational status and frequencies.

The callsign of the BLUEsat satellite itself has yet to be assigned, but the groundstation uses the callsign VK2UNS. This is a club station license, so amateur licencees using the groundstation will assume this callsign.

Getting your Amateur License
The Amateur Radio in Australia FAQ is a good resource for those interested in becoming amateur licensees. Although the costs of purchasing and setting up an amateur station can be relatively high, especially for university students, licensed BLUEsat members can utilize the BLUEsat groundstation facilities free of charge. This is an excellent opportunity to get into this hobby rather cheaply while still at Uni!

The BLUEsat project owns many pieces of literature, which can be found around the groundstation, which are available for BLUEsat members wanting to study for and take their amateur license examination. Several team members are licensed operators and are willing to help you get into the hobby and get your license.

License examinations are held by the Wireless Institute of Australia and the licenses themselves are issued by The Australian Communications Authority. The NSW division of WIA is located in Paramatta, and the project organizes examinations for groups of members from time to time.

	Author: Chris Walsh © The Author, the BLUEsat project or UNSW. All rights reserved. Last Modified: April 23 2006 18:54:09.