NASA Ames Research Center
Amateur Radio Club

NA6MF
http://hamradio.arc.nasa.gov

Simplex Net: 146.445 MHz        Repeater: 145.250 MHz, minus offset, tone 123.0
Events: 146.490 MHz    NASA-TV re-transmission: 145.585 MHz

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Last Update: Jan 24, 2012

January 19 AARC Noon Meeting: Brian Day on Amateur Radio Participation in LADEE Lunar Science

Brian Day, Education/Public Outreach (E/PO) Lead for the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) presented this program and that offers students and the public exciting ways to participate in science supporting the mission through observations of meteoroid impacts on the Moon and meteors in the Earth’s atmosphere. Brian specifically asked amateur radio people to become involved by using their skills in meteor scatter to collect meteor shower data which will be used in correlation of measurements by LADEE instruments.

Mr. Day has worked as a software engineer in the Silicon Valley since 1982, taught programming courses at San Jose State, and served as chairman of the observatory at Foothill College for 16 years.

AARC re-transmitted audio of this meeting on 145.585 MHz. We may perform same service on future AARC meetings.

PDF of Brian Day’s presentation can be seen here.

Amateur Radio Participation in LADEE Lunar Science

The local amateur radio community has an opportunity to directly participate in, and support, a NASA Ames Research Center developed mission and contribute to lunar science research.

The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft, an innovative example of NASA’s new small, low cost, spacecraft technologies and missions, is scheduled to launch in May 2013, go into lunar orbit, then drop down to low altitude to directly sample and measure the lunar atmosphere as a critical part of the international science focus to increase scientific understanding of the lunar environment and processes.

Results from the LADEE mission will augment scientific knowledge and understanding regarding the critical atmospheric component of the lunar environment, supplementing lunar surface science results from the recent, highly successful, Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission, another mission controlled and operated by Ames Research Center locally, that, working in conjunction with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), recently confirmed the presence of water and a water cycle on the moon.

Since the Earth and the Moon travel together through space, encountering streams of debris together, observations of meteors in the Earth’s atmosphere can allow us to make inferences as to what is happening on the lunar surface; information valuable to the LADEE science mission.

While meteor counts from visual and video observations will provide useful data and a way for the general public to participate in the science of the mission, counts made by radio observers listening for reflection events provide some unique advantages for the mission, as well as, some unique opportunities to experience and participate in a different, unique, mode of radio communications for research; forward scatter meteor detection.

Additional, specific, information and guidance on this LADEE mission science support opportunity will be made available through this web site as the program develops.

More information on the LADEE mission can be found at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LADEE/main/.

Information on Forward Scatter Meteor Detection, and NASA’s Forward Scatter Meteor RADAR system and program, including typical equipment requirements and configurations, can be found at http://www.nasa.gov/offices/meo/outreach/forward_scatter_detail.html.

AARC Frequencies

The Tuesday AARC ARES/RACES Net at 12:00 noon will use 146.445 Mhz. Here are all frequencies coordinated with the Santa Clara County ARES/RACES organization. We may still be using 145.585 for events but eventually this will be phased out.
• 146.445, Tactical 1
• 146.505, Tactical 2
• 146.550, Tactical 3
• 147.465, Tactical 4
• 146.490, Event (may still previous event on 145.585)
• 145.250-, 123.0, Command NA6MF
• 223.540, Packet 220, Primary
• 144.990, Packet 2M, Secondary

Full list of countywide frequencies can be found at http://www.scc-ares-races.org/freqs/freqs.html

Tactical channels are considered for ARES and RACES activities, “Event” is used for special purposes such as club meetings, NASA-TV re-transmissions. Command is AARC’s repeater, and two packet frequencies are used with County and city EOC message handling.

Amateur Television from AARC

AARC occasionally re-transmits NASA-TV to the K6BEN video repeater, and other events. Click here for more info on amateur television from AARC.

Receiving K6BEN in south San Francisco bay area
K6BEN video repeater is on 427.25 MHz, same frequency as cable channel 58. To receive K6BEN, set your TV set to cable channel 58, connect a UHF antenna (vertically polarized) aimed at Mt. Hamilton (east SJ foothills). Recommended antenna is a UHF (70 cm) yagi antenna.

NASA-TV schedule at http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/schedule.html
Daily schedule at http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Schedule.html
Launch schedules at http://www.nasa.gov/missions/highlights/schedule.html
NASA Breaking News http://www.nasa.gov/rss/breaking_news.rss
NASA News Releases http://www.nasa.gov/news/releases/latest/index.html
NASA News Events http://www.nasa.gov/news/index.html
ELV Countdown Portal from KSC http://countdown.ksc.nasa.gov/elv/

AARC Continuing Meetings

AARC meets every third Thursday monthly at AARC Shack, talk-in 146.445 simplex.

The club is continuing a series of technical presentations on amateur radio. This is not only for people who already have a ham license, but for those who might be considering getting into amateur radio. There are many applications of ham radio that are not only interesting and useful, but which are also essential in emergencies on land and at sea. The first presentation was an overview of using high frequency (HF) radio on sailboats for voice and email communications. Future technical presentations may include presentations on bouncing signals off meteor showers (“meteor scatter”), digital communications, and how to get your amateur license.

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