I’m still new to this and have a lot to learn.
My station 568 seems to be running OK at the moment however
I sometimes can’t schedule an observation on my own station. I can’t see any reason for this. Overlaps etc.
I note also many other observers on my station which is OK because that is the aim of the network, right?
Is it possible, I can’t schedule my own station because others have scheduled my station for that particular time so I can’t?
It would be nice if I could use my own station during my waking hours. After that the rest of the world can have a play. I don’t think it’s fair for some people to auto schedule a particular satellite many days in advance at the expense of station owners. What are they doing with so much data?
Should I not get priority over my own station? Is there a way around this?
Also, I need to do some antenna work on my station. Do I, can I, notify people before taking it down?
Or do I simply switch to “testing” mode? Or switch it off? If I simply disconnect the antenna wouldn’t that result in a lot of false “failed” vetting?
I need the best part of a day to build a new antenna switching unit in preparation for bringing a UHF station on line.
Yes, if somebody has already scheduled an observation, you have no access to that “slot” unless you first go in and delete the other observation.
Simply look at the list of scheduled observations for your station to see if the there is something scheduled in the time slot you want. If yes, click on the observation, hit the little “trash can” symbol (or “rubbish can” for the non-yanks) and then select “OK” in the pop-up. The slot will now be available.
One caveat, is that 95% of the time this happens to me, the observation that is scheduled is already the exact observation that I want - so no need to delete.
Moving your station in testing mode is the best thing in this case. Ideally 48 hours before, so people will not be able to schedule during your downtime, however some failed observation are not an issue and they don’t count in station stats when it is in testing mode.
About the scheduling @K3RLD’s answer is the best way to go.
Some more answers/details:
The concept of SatNOGS is to utilize as much as it is possible the stations in the network and get as much data as it can in order to help satellite missions. Already many of the data are used by satellite teams and other individuals.
You can see many of the data are sent in SatNOGS DB and after decoding process end up in SatNOGS Dashboards where they are visualized.
Someofthedashboards are used extensively by satellite teams in order to know the satellite status and make the right decisions for their missions. This is why we need much data.
You have always priority on your own station by having the ability to remove observations. I know it’s not ideal to remove, one by one, many observations but this is the only way to do it right now.
Some other ways to get around this, is to add in your station’s description a paragraph with details on how you want other people use your station. For example:
“This station should prioritize the FOX satellites and due to limited internet connection no more than 20 observations should be scheduled daily, except for special events.”
Unfortunately this doesn’t guarantee that it will be always fulfilled, but I think all the people that regular schedule observations, try to respect what is written in station’s description. The plan, with auto-scheduling coming, is to add features in network that will move these kind of preferences from the station description to station settings and would be automatically respected.
