AO-27's Satellite FM Repeater Off-Line

AO-27 FM REPEATER DOWN FOLLOWING SOFTWARE RESET

Ground controllers are asking that amateurs refrain for the time being from transmitting on the AO-27 satellite's uplink. The request comes as ground controllers are attempting to reload the satellite's software following a computer crash on July 31.

"The analog repeater is turned off, so you will not be heard, and you will interfere with the software upload process," AO-27 Ground Controller Michael Wyrick, N4USI, said this week in asking for the cooperation of the amateur community. He says ground controllers are working as fast as they can to get AO-27 back in operation.

Wyrick says the AO-27 "easy sat" suffered a software reset on July 31. The satellite contains an FM voice repeater that uplinks on 2 meters and downlinks on 70 cm. A project of AMRAD, it was launched in September 1993.

Wyrick said that uploading the necessary high-level code turned out to not be an easy task, Wyrick explained. "The primary control station used for uploading code was not used for over five years and required days of work to get back on-line," he said. But when the code was uploaded AO-27, the satellite ran the high-level code only for a few seconds, before rebooting again. Ground controllers were at a loss to explain the second reboot, but Wyrick says they're looking into several leads, and he asked the amateur community to be patient.

"The best help the community can give is to not flood controllers with e-mail about when is AO-27 going to be back on-line," Wyrick said. "We are working as fast as satellite passes allow."

Wyrick says the AO-27 exciter on 435.797 is turned on full-time and operates at low power during uploads.

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