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Subject: [ANS] ANS-172 AMSAT News Service Weekly Bulletins
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2026 20:03:39 EDT
From: Mark Johns, K0JM via ANS
Reply-To: k0jm.mark@gmail.com
Organization: The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation
To: space@ww
Newsgroups: rec.radio.amateur.space,rec.radio.info
Followup-To: rec.radio.amateur.space
*AMSAT News Service* *ANS-172*
*June 21, 2026*
In this edition:
* 2026 AMSAT Field Day Next Weekend!
* 2026 AMSAT Space Symposium & Annual General Meeting
* Satellites Are The New Fire Towers
* Announcing OrbitDeck
* Changes to AMSAT-NA TLE Distribution
* Dragon Returns Packed with Space Station Science
* ARISS News
* AMSAT Ambassador Activities
* Satellite Shorts From All Over
The AMSAT® News Service bulletins are a free, weekly news and informat
ion
service of AMSAT, The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation. ANS publishes
news related to Amateur Radio in Space including reports on the activities
of a worldwide group of Amateur Radio operators who share an active
interest in designing, building, launching and communicating through analog
and digital Amateur Radio satellites.
The news feed on https://www.amsat.org publishes news of Amateur Radio in
Space as soon as our volunteers can post it.
*Please send any amateur satellite news or reports to: ans-editor [at]
amsat.org
You can sign up for free e-mail delivery of the AMSAT News Service
Bulletins via the ANS List; to join this list see:
https://mailman.amsat.org/postorius/lists/ans.amsat.org/
------------------------------
2026 AMSAT Field Day Next Weekend!
It’s that time of year again; summer and Field Day! Each year the A
merican
Radio Relay League (ARRL) sponsors Field Day as a “picnic, a campou
t,
practice for emergencies, an informal contest and, most of all, FUN!â€
The
event takes place during a 27-hour period on the fourth weekend of June.
For 2026 the event takes place from 1800 UTC on Saturday June 27, 2026
through 2100 UTC on Sunday June 28, 2026. Those who set up prior to 1800
UTC on June 27 can operate only 24 hours. The Radio Amateur Satellite
Corporation (AMSAT) promotes its own version of Field Day for operation via
the amateur satellites, held concurrently with the ARRL event.
This year should be as much fun as last year since we have more than 10
transponders and repeaters available. For AMSAT purposes, a transponder on
a satellite would count as two if you could do phone and CW. We count them
by modes, not the satellite names.
Users should check the AMSAT status page at http://www.amsat.org/status/
and the pages at https://www.amsat.org/two-way-satellites/ for what is
available in the weeks leading up to field day. To reduce the amount of
time to research each satellite, see the current FM satellite table at
https://www.amsat.org/fm-satellite-frequency-summary/ and the current
linear satellite table at
https://www.amsat.org/linear-satellite-frequency-summary/ .
If you are considering ONLY the FM voice satellites, there are ISS and
SO-50. The congestion on FM LEO satellites is always so intense that we
must continue to limit their use to one-QSO-per-FM-satellite. This includes
the International Space Station. You will be allowed one QSO if the ISS is
operating Voice.
It was suggested during past field days that a control station be allowed
to coordinate contacts on the FM satellites. There is nothing in the rules
that would prohibit this. This is nothing more than a single station
working multiple QSO’s. If a station were to act as a control stati
on and
give QSO’s to every other field day station, the control station wo
uld
still only be allowed to turn in one QSO per FM satellite while the other
station would be able to submit one QSO.
The format for the message exchange on the ISS or other digital packet
satellite is an unproto packet to the other station (3-way exchange
required) with all the same information as normally exchanged for ARRL
Field Day, e.g.:
W6NWG de KK5DO 2A STX
KK5DO de W6NWG QSL 5A SDG
W6NWG de KK5DO QSL
If you have worked the satellites on Field Day in recent years, you may
have noticed a lot of good contacts can be made on some of the
less-populated, low-earth-orbit satellites like AO-7, RS-44, AO-73, FO-29
and JO-97. During Field Day the transponders come alive like 20 meters on a
weekend. The good news is that the transponders on these satellites will
support multiple simultaneous contacts. The bad news is that you canâ€
™t use
FM, just low duty-cycle modes like SSB and CW.
*[ANS thanks Bruce Paige, KK5DO, AMSAT Director of Contests and Awards for
the above information.]*
------------------------------
Buying from Ham Radio Outlet? Add AMSAT’s *Getting Started With Ama
teur
Satellites* to your order.
from HRO https://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pidð-019238
------------------------------
2026 AMSAT Space Symposium & Annual General Meeting
The 44th AMSAT Space Symposium & Annual General Meeting will be held in
Jacksonville, FL on October 8-11, 2026 at the Crowne Plaza Jacksonville
Airport/I-95.
Registration details and Call for Papers will be coming soon.
To book hotel rooms online, click here: AMSAT Conference Rooms
6&checkOutDate&checkOutMonthYear 2026&rateCodelBARC&_PMID™
801505&GPCÿS&cnÿ&adjustMonthúlse&showAppÿue&monthIndex>
Reservations can also be made by phone at 1-800-227-6963. The group code is
AMS. The direct hotel phone number is 1-904-741-4404.
*[ANS thanks AMSAT for the above information.]*
------------------------------
The 2026 Coins Are Here! Help Support GOLF-TEE and Fox-Plus.
*Annual memberships start at only $120.*
[image: Presidents' Club 2026 Coin]
*Join the AMSAT President’s Club today and help Keep Amateur Radio in
Space! https://www.amsat.org/join-the-amsat-presidents-club/
------------------------------
Satellites Are The New Fire Towers
The Bezos Earth Fund announced a $26 million grant for the nonprofit Earth
Fire Alliance and its satellite-based wildfire detection program, Axiosâ
€™
Ben Geman reports.
The money — alongside support from Google and others — will
help fund the
launch of three FireSat satellites this summer.
The groups say they’ll “provide wildfire monitoring at leas
t twice daily
over critical geographies, including a focus on the Amazon Basin — one of
the most fire-vulnerable regions on Earth.â€
The funding is the largest-ever single philanthropic grant for wildfire
detection, the groups say. They add that the program could help protect
homes, communities and biodiversity — and cut CO2 emissions from wi
ldfires
by up to 10% annually.
*Earth Fire Alliance’s first three FireSats at a clean room in Moun
tain
View, Calif. (Photo: Muon Space)*
Wildfires are a major driver of deforestation, which worsens climate
change. They accounted for 42% of tree cover loss in 2025, per World
Resources Institute data.
The Earth Fire Alliance says it hopes to have dozens of satellites
operating by the early 2030s that can “monitor every point on Earth
every
20 minutes.â€
*[ANS thanks Axios for the above information. Read the full article at
https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-pm-f6fe1278-52eb-43c8-8bfe-7a1fe85b
1c56.html?utm_sourceþwsletter&utm_mediumÿail&utm_campaignþwslet
ter_axiospm&streamÿp
tter_axiospm&streamÿp>]*
------------------------------
Announcing OrbitDeck
A new open-source desktop application called OrbitDeck brings the classic
OSCARLOCATOR into the software age, pairing a faithful recreation of the
beloved paper tracking aid with a built-in classroom of orbital-mechanics
lessons. Written in Python and released under the MIT license, OrbitDeck
runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux — including the Raspberry Pi â
€” and is
tracking-and-analysis software only; radio and rotator control are
intentionally left to the excellent dedicated tools already serving that
role.
*OrbitDeck map screen (Image credit: Paul Stoetzer)*
Longtime operators will remember the OSCARLOCATOR: a polar map overlaid
with a rotating ground-track transparency that let you predict a pass with
nothing but a pencil and a clock. OrbitDeck rebuilds that experience as an
interactive on-screen OSCARLOCATOR. You drag the map to rotate the path-arc
overlay across a polar or QTH-centered base map, watching the satelliteâ
€™s
position and your station’s footprint move in real time. A protract
or-style
rim with per-degree tick marks and longitude and azimuth labels frames the
disc. You can drive the overlay live, position it by hand to any
equator-crossing longitude, drag the marker along the arc to step through
the minutes after the crossing, or seed it directly to your next visible
pass. A compact next-equator-crossings list is built in.
Crucially, OrbitDeck also closes the loop with paper. Any satellite â€
” real
or hypothetical — can be exported as a printable PDF OSCARLOCATOR,
ready to
drop onto a clipboard for portable, screen-free operating in the field or
in the classroom.
That classroom focus runs throughout the program. A dedicated Learn section
presents orbital mechanics across grouped, interactive tabs — Keple
r’s
equal-areas law, anomalies and the vis-viva relation, nodal precession and
sun-synchronous orbits, slant range and footprint geometry, Doppler
tune-through, eclipse and beta-angle sunlight, a link-budget sandbox, and
element-set aging — each with a live diagram you can manipulate rat
her than
merely read. A printable “Orbits 101†handout rounds it out
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