Dear all,
Thanks to numerous beacon reports from W7KKE and DK3WN we established that periodic brown outs of our satellite that started to appear early last week are most probably caused by EPS falling to critical mode after battery voltage falls down to 6.5 V. This is most probably associated to some technical problem of solar panels, consequently generating less power than we planned. The satellite returns to safe mode when battery charges again to 7.2 V. This is indicated by appearance of the strong FM beacon signal at 437,275 MHz. We are trying to turn off the beacon temporarily to charge battery to nominal level and resume nominal operations. During today’s 05:00 UTC pass over Lithuania we seem to have succeeded in switching off the beacon so You might not hear it for some time. If everything goes according to plan, system should resume to nominal mode when 7,4 V battery voltage is reached. You will notice that when You can hear periodic 9k6 fsk packets at 437,550 MHz. Your further reports will be very appreciated.
We still have strong hopes to turn on the FM transponder when things get better, for all you guys to try it.
73!
Laurynas Maciulis
LituanicaSAT-1 systems engineer
LY1LM