Is there any difference in the CW beacon of PO-101 from that of ARISS?

 CW beacon of Amateur Radio on International Space Station announces 'DE NA1SS' in Morse Code with a tone modulation in FM. It is easily audible in an FM only radio like my IC 27370. Most often it is heard only once during a pass of the satellite in my region. 

But the CW beacon of PO-101 has no audible tone and seems to be just carrier switching like the conventional CW sent by us in HF bands. So I cannot hear any tone in my FM only IC 2730. But I can hear the variation in intensity of the hissing noise of the open squelch when the beacon is being received. If it was an all mode radio like IC 705, I presume that I would have heard an audible tone as I hear in my FT-710 HF radio for CW signals when I choose CW mode. 

Anyway, hearing the beacon prompted me to read about the CW beacon of PO-101 from the Diwata-2 (PO-101) Amateur Radio Unit: Information and Usage page. Unlike in the case of the shore CW beacon of ARISS, the CW beacon of PO-101 lasts on full minute and is followed by one minute without the beacon. Again the cycle repeats, as long as the satellite is in FM repeater mode. So there will be about 5-6 CW beacons sent in a typical pass of PO-101. When PO-101 is in the APRS mode, it sends out packets every 30 seconds and each packet is sent in 1-2 seconds. That would mean 20 APRS beacons could be received in a pass.

When I looked at the details on the CW beacon, it is mind boggling, unlike just the callsign NA1SS announced by ARISS. It starts with MABUHAY _ PILIPINAS _ DW4TA, of which the last is the callsign of the satellite. That is followed by a string of characters which encodes a lot of information including the status of VHF and UHF antennas, battery voltage, supply current, ambient temperature and many more parameters.


73 de Jon, VU2JO

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What is LMR SDR?

Have you heard of zBITX?

The All New zBitx 5 watts QRP All Band, All Mode Radio is Here!