Homepage

SOUTHERN AFRICAN AMATEUR RADIO SATELLITE ASSOCIATION (SA AMSAT)

Registered as a non-profit organisation by the South African Department of Social Development
Registration number No 55-363

UPDATED 6 July 2008

BACAR ISS ECHO SPACE SYMPOSIUM

SA AMSAT
P O Box 90438
Garsfontein 0042
South Africa
Tel: 012 991 4662
Fax: 012 991 5651
Email:
saamsat@intekom.co.za

SA AMSAT PAYLOAD ON SUMBANDILASAT

Listen to Dave Long

6 July 2008 ZS5FR's Satellite Report on Amateur Radio Mirror
Sponsored by Sentech Sundays 10:00 CAT
17570kHz
7205 kHz
7082 kHz

INTERNET STREAM
SELECT SARL
Mondays 21:05 CAT
3215 kHz

SHOP
Get an SA AMSAT BADGE

JOIN SA AMSAT

LEARN MORE ABOUT SA AMSAT

SA AMSAT CONSTITUTION

SumbandilaSat launch new date!

The launch of SumbandilaSat carrying an Amateur payload is now scheduled for December/January time frame. The South African Government recently met with the Russian in Moscow. A Russian delegation will be visiting South Africa in the next few week to finalise the launch

SumbandilaSat will be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

BACAR 2008 set for early August

BACAR 2008 was planned for take off on 24 May 2008 from the Gauteng area. The launch is now likely to take place in early August.

The next meeting of the team will be on Saturday 12 July 2008 2008 at 11 am at the NARC.

Review payload and testing of components
Finalising mapping team arrangements
Setting up Tracking teams

To join the team and get regular updates send a email to saamsat@intekom.co.za

BACAR FUND
Make a donation to the BACAR fund. Send a cheque to SA AMSAT at P O Box 90438, Garsfontein 0042 or do an electronic transfer to SA AMSAT, ABSA Menlyn Acc 560 153 171 Branch code 335 645. Your contribution will go to developing payloads and operating and launch costs

MORE ABOUT BACAR
BACAR is the acronym for Balloon Carrying Amateur Radio. The activity involved sending up a balloon with an Amateur Radio payload involving a large number of enthusiasts from a launch team, a recovery team to individual radio amateurs tracking the signals from their QTH and reporting in to a mapping team. Read more

Read the BACAR story in the February Edition of EngineerIT online at www.eepublishers.co.za.

JOIN SA AMSAT NOW

SA AMSAT has introduced a new email newsletter that will arrive in your inbox on a regular basis, monthly or more often if there is important news. It is optimised for email and will not gobble up your bandwidth. Download the July newsletter to see for yourself.

Members also receive a membership certificate upon joining. If you are already a member and have not received a certificate please send your details to saamsat@intekom.co.za and a certificate will be mailed to you.

To join, get all the details here

SA AMSAT MAILS UP TWO EMAIL NEWSLETTERS A MONTH RIGHT INTO YOUR MAILBOX. SEND AN EMAIL FOR A SAMPLE

BACAR launch delayed

Join the BACAR Team at the next meeting at the SARL National Amateur Radio Centre at 11 am on Saturday 28 June 2008 (tentative date - to be confirmed). Launch is likely in the July/August time frame

Click here for an update on BACAR

NEW APPROACH TO POWER SUPPLY TECHNOLOGY FOR SPACE CRAFT

SUITSAT AND EAGLE MAY BE THE FIRST

Lew McFadin (W5DID), working with Steve Bible (N7HPR) and Steve's colleagues (especially Keith Curtis) at Microchip (the PIC people) has been working on a next generation power conditioning system. The basic idea is to have a power charge/discharge conditioner for each cell of the spacecraft's battery pack. This will allow the use of several different battery technologies (NiCd, NiMH, LiIon, etc) and also some of the new "super capacitors".

The SuperCap developments have been exploding of late. One immediate service is for regenerative braking in hybrid and electric vehicles, since the capacitors seem to be able to withstand a (virtually) infinite number of charge/discharge cycles, and then can "soak up" & discharge huge currents -- must faster than any chemical batteries can do.

Batteries store watt-hours of energy, while capacitors handle large numbers of watts of power. One German light-rail system employs a total of 600 2600Farad capacitors for regenerative braking. Some US electric buses have capacitor banks with 144 18Farad capacitors that deliver 400 Amps at 360 Volts.

Get the load down on “Super capacitors” http://electronicdesign.com/
Articles/ArticleID/17465/17465.html.

Starting on page 50 the AMSAT/MicroChip effort is described along with schematics The closing paragraph (which doesn't mention the planed use of these concepts on Suitsat2) says:

Microchip worked with AMSAT-NA, the not-for-profit private organization that develops amateur-radio satellites. AMSAT’s next big project, the Eagle satellite, is slated for launch in March 2009. To make Eagle function for decades, it will have a power system based on this work that combines solar panels, lithium-ion batteries, and ultra caps in an integrated power system that will optimize the use of each of those components.