This morning I got up bright and early to see if I could listen to the voice beacon on Sumbandila that would be activated for youth day over RSA today (16 June 2011). Getting up fairly early on a public holiday was quite a feat, only to arrive on campus unable to get into the building because my access tag did not work for some reason. With the clock ticking I was able to find someone to let me into the building and the tracking could begin.
The idea was to try and record the voice message from the beacon. Having not recorded using the SignaLink USB sound card it did not work that well on the first pass. Things went a bit better on the second pass. Both passes had a strong clear signal on 435.345 MHz. I’ll post the recording in the next day or two. I also managed to track quite a few satellites, but more on that later.
leonsteenkamp 