May 1, 2007 by kb3ljm.

The launch date for SSETI-ESEO, the ESA led student satellite project intended for Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO), has been delayed by approximately one year. It had originally been hoped that this satellite would be a secondary payload on Arianespace launch from Kourou in late November, 2008 but it now seems that the expected secondary payload opportunity will not be available. Although this delay is regrettable it will give the various teams much needed extra time to finalise and test their systems. A BBM - “Breadboard model” of the satellite systems and payloads is being produced at the ESTEC facility in the Netherlands for testing purposes. This will commence operations during this summer. Work continues to develop the AMSAT-UK communications package that is planned to provide a 435 to 2400 MHz (Mode U/S) linear transponder using both analogue and DSP based systems. It will additionally downlink telemetry at 400 bps and provide command and ranging facilities. Full details of the project are available at www.uk.amsat.org click on “News Archive” and then “SSETI”. [AMSAT NEWS]

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May 1, 2007 by kb3ljm.

TULSA — An eight month-old Federal Aviation Administration ban on radios in air traffic control towers could put lives at risk when severe weather bears down on airports, a national labor union says. At issue is a contract with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association implemented in September by the FAA that removed AM/FM radios from tower work areas to prevent them from becoming a distraction to controllers. But taking the radios means controllers lose a key asset they use to monitor the funnel clouds of a tornado and relay that information to pilots in the air, the air traffic controllers association says. The FAA said the controllers already have a “large amount of weather information” in the tower. Controllers receive information about precipitation and wind patterns from equipment available in the tower, but cannot hear tornado alerts the National Weather Service is putting out to the public, according to the union. The FAA allows radios and TVs in the break rooms, but those are often out of earshot to controllers, the union says. “These folks are sitting ducks,” said Doug Church, a spokesman for the union, which represents 14,500 air traffic controllers nationwide. “It’s about punishing controllers; there is no distraction to a work environment that has a regular radio on.” Since the ban, the union says there have been at least a half-dozen near miss “tornado vs. tower events,” including Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Denver. Last week, a funnel cloud was spotted about a mile northeast of Tulsa International Airport’s FAA Tulsa Tower, said Scott Keller, the controllers association representative here. Keller said the only way controllers found out about the funnel, which eventually petered out, was from an employee’s wife who phoned the tower to warn them. Keller, with 30 years of air traffic controller experience, said taking away the AM/FM radios was a way for the FAA to “belittle” controllers and wants the agency to compromise and install weather-band radios in the towers. “It does help me with reporting to pilots and our own safety,” Keller said. “There’s hundreds of times those reports have helped me tell pilots there’s a funnel cloud.” In a statement, the FAA said that “controllers have a large amount of weather information in the tower, as they regularly relay that information to pilots. “The resources available to them include regular reports from human weather observers in the field, automated observing equipment and the National Weather Service,” the statement said.

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2007-04-30-faa-radio-ban_N.htm?csp=34

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May 1, 2007 by kb3ljm.

JAKARTA, Indonesia — A dead passenger traveled unnoticed for at least half a day on an executive passenger train, an Indonesian newspaper reported Friday. Anxious family members found the body of Edy Haryanto, 55, sitting in a locked lavatory on Thursday afternoon, more than a day after he had boarded with a group of friends in the central Javanese town of Tegal, the Warta Kota newspaper reported. His family became worried when Haryanto didn’t get out at the station in Jakarta at the end of the 6-hour journey and his cellphone went unanswered. The body traveled back and forth between Tegal and Jakarta before a janitor told the family he had been unable to clean one lavatory because the door was locked, the report said. The cause of the death was not immediately clear, but Haryanto had recently suffered a stroke, it said. Dina Nurhandayani, the man’s 29-year-old daughter, said she planned to file a complaint of negligence with the state-owned train company PT Kereta Api Indonesia.

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2007-04-27-dead-traveler-on-train_N.htm

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May 1, 2007 by kb3ljm.

The FCC has terminated with prejudice a hearing proceeding involving a case of apparent ham radio identity theft. The FCC has said its evidence suggests that Joseph W. Hartmann Jr of Lansing, Michigan, “intentionally submitted fraudulent administrative updates” to obtain the privileges associated with the General class license of a Delaware radio amateur with a very similar name. In a Memorandum Opinion and Order (MO&O) released March 23, the FCC further ruled to dismiss with prejudice Hartmann’s pending new Amateur Radio license application, which he filed after the FCC questioned his attempts to change the Delaware ham’s record in the Universal Licensing System (ULS). After several apparently unsuccessful attempts to deliver a Hearing Designation Order (HDO) to Hartmann and even affording him more time to file a written appearance, Hartmann sent Presiding Administrative Law Judge Arthur I. Steinberg three identical e-mail messages.

http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2007/04/30/100/?nc=1

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May 1, 2007 by kb3ljm.

With every FCC amateur licensee now permitted to operate on at least four HF bands and thousands of new General and Amateur Extra Class licensees joining the multitude on all of the MF/HF bands, this is a good time to review how we live up to the principle set out in Section 97.101(b) of the FCC Rules: ‘Each station licensee and each control operator must cooperate in selecting transmitting channels and in making the most effective use of the amateur service frequencies. No frequency will be assigned for the exclusive use of any station.’

http://www.arrl.org/news/features/2007/05/01/1/?nc=1

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