Amateur Radio Satellites or OSCARs are a series of satellites orbiting earth that uses Amateur Radio Frequency band to facilitate long range communication between earth base stations.
However these satellites are not in synchronous orbit with earth, meaning that their location changes over time when they orbits earth. A satellite would only cover certain areas in just under an hour!
GPredict Satellite Tracking Software
Fortunately, Linux users can track various types of satellite including OSCARs that orbits earth with GPredict. The software itself is easy to use, at most you just need to specify the coordinate of your base station on earth and select which satellite you want to track via GPredict.
GPredict will then will shows its tracking result on the screen along with the satellite footprint as a guidance for the users. GPredict also able to tell when a satellite come into view along with its ETA. This would help you prepare yourself for a QSO session using the satellite.
Heres a couple of screenshot of GPredict
GPredict is available for Linux,Mac OS, *BSD and Windows platform (experimental) from Groudstation’s project website.
Gpredict is also available straight from Ubuntu/Debian apt-get repository.
Some interesting reading from a guy who uses amateur radio satellites frequently to communicate – http://9w2cbl.blogspot.com
[tags]amateur, satellites, oscar, hamradio, ham, hobby, linux, open source,ubuntu,gutsy,gpredict,amateur radio[/tags]
