PhoneSat NASA's Smartphone Nanosatellite
PhoneSat is a nanosatellite, categorizing the mass as between one and ten kilograms. Additionally, PhoneSat is a 1U CubeSat, having a volume of around one liter. The PhoneSat Project strives to decrease the cost of satellites while not sacrificing performance. In an effort to achieve this goal, the project is based around Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) electronics to provide functionality for as many parts as possible while still creating a reliable satellite. Two copies of PhoneSat 1.0 are being launched mid April 2013 along with an early prototype of PhoneSat 2.0 referred to as PhoneSat 2.0.beta.
Tower Project ongoing
The first part of our tower project was completed before the end of the month, we would like to thanks Mr Allen Earley for donating his 70 feet tower for our club and for letting us to use one of his premises to host our current repeater on it's location, we also would like to thanks Macias at Bill Crains for his great support on helping us getting the tower down, it will be almost impossible for us without his advice and for donating his time to help. As planned we will continue servicing the tower and a new paint job will be done to have it ready for it's new location.
Welcome! to our club!!!
Congratulations! to our new hams and club members Ricardo Kallen KK6CGO and Ernest Holdridge KK6CGP and we are also pleased to introduce our new VE on our team Tim KJ6VGM, we hope to have our new candidates now as licensed radio operators soon on the air and joining us on our repeater.
This was possible as the result of our third exam session for the volunteer examiner team from the Calexico Amateur Radio Society, we are looking to have future session in a very near future as we have more candidates that are getting ready to get their ticket to go on this wonderful hobby of ham radio.
2012 Marks All-Time High for Amateur Radio Licenses
As 2012 came to a close, ARRL VEC Manager Maria Somma, AB1FM, had a good reason to cheer: The number of radio amateurs in the US reached an all-time high of almost 710,000. “2012 was definitely a banner year for the number of Amateur Radio operators here in the US,” she said. “It is amazing to see these new numbers and to know that Amateur Radio is experiencing such a healthy trend.”
Read more: 2012 Marks All-Time High for Amateur Radio Licenses