5 January 2012

I went out this morning to have another go at trying to observe FITSAT-1 (NIWAKA), this time by listening for its beacon.

The details of the pass are as follows:

	Time	Alt	Az
Start of pass	0816:24	10°	SW
Maximum altitude	0819:54	54°	SE
End of pass	0822:36	10°	ENE

I went down to Pier 84 and arrived at 0745 to allow time to assemble the Elk Log Periodic antenna and get it hooked up to the radio. I was using my ICOM ID-31A D-STAR radio in analog FM mode. To locate the satellite I had planned to use DroidSat on my Google Nexus smartphone but found that the program was frozen when I launched it. I suspect that it was looking for an internet connection.

As a fallback I began sweeping the SW horizon about a minute before the satellite was scheduled to pass through 10° and kept moving my sweep up and east as time progressed. I had squelch open so heard a constant static roar. But there was one place over NJ where there was no static when the antenna was pointed there. I backtracked to it but couldn't find it again so figured it was just an unmodulated radio source. The same thing happened when the antenna was pointed S. When I got over to E the gaps in the static became more frequent and then a pattern became evident. I was expecting to hear a tone but it became evident that the gaps in the static were the Morse code. They came in bursts that were separated from each other by 15-20 seconds of static. I listened to four or five bursts and on the last one thought the initial character was an H. This is consistent with what the FITSAT-1 web site says NIWAKA will transmit ('The signal starts with "HI DE NIWAKA ..." and telemetry data follows.') They are transmitting so fast that I can't even tell the difference between their dots and dashes.

I am reasonably certain that what I heard was Morse code from NIWAKA but I want to repeat the experiment to be certain. The next time I will hook a recorder up to the radio and bring the audio file into Audacity when I get home so that I can visualize the wavefore and slow the file down to the point that I can decode it.

An observing report has been sent to Takushi.

When I arrived at Pier 84 I noticed that the protective "tennis tent" was missing from Space Shuttle Enterprise up on Intrepid and a portion of its tail fin is missing.
Walking farther out onto the pier I found that the paving slabs were lifted up as though an earthquake fault had run through them.
I decided to walk north along the river to where Peter and I had observed the river at high tide at the peak of the hurricane to see what damage still remained.

There was no other damage along the waterfront until I got up to the transfer station at 59 street where the waves had undermined the sidewalk.
Nothing has been done to repair that damage and there was no additional damage up as far along the river as I walked (probably ~65 St).

From there I went across 57 St to see if anything had been done about the crane on the top of the highrise under construction there. It appears that they have removed the dangly (technical term) part of the crane (the boom) but nothing else has been done. There is no sign of a new crane being erected on that side of the building to be used to remove the remainder of the damaged crane.

There were three trailers full of sheet rock parked in front of the building so they are continuing internal construction.

This is the first time I have gotten a good look at the exterior of the building, I normally see it in the middle of the night from the TotL. It is, in my opinion, a very ugly building.