CHOMPTT no signal/valid frames since Nov 6th

Satellites & Observations
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Recent CHOMPTT observations with ‘decoded frames’ are showing no RF signal with random data. I looked back through the last few months of CHOMPTT observation, it seems the last verified frames from CHOMPTT ceased around Nov 6th 2021.

https://network.satnogs.org/observations/4963727/

Nothing valid since then, at least as far as I could see.

I’ve reached out to the CHOMPTT team for verification of status but it appears (to me) the beacon has been offline for several months. Usually a bad sign. I will followup here with any new information on status.

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Observation #5473158

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@scottbob09 re: Observation #5473158

There is no AFSK 1k2 signal in the waterfall and the resulting ‘frame’ is a false-positive with only the hex value “0F”. Random garbage from gr-satellites, it happens…

All valid CHOMPTT data frames start with “AE 92 64 B0 AC A8 60 AE 92 64” as illustrated in the observation SatNOGS Network - Observation 4963727

This is the reason I raised the question about all of these “with signal” and “with data” observations since Nov 6th. They all seem to be false-positives.

My guess is CHOMPTT suffered a failure of some type on or around Nov 6th and all we are seeing since then are ghosts!. :ghost: Time will tell!

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update:

CHOMPTT team lead John Conklin relayed this:

We have had some issues with our ground station, and the deadman timer triggered, which shuts off the Stensat beacon radio

I dug around more and found this status page which confirms the exact time the beacon went silent, 2021-11-06 19:25:47 UTC:

So not a problem with the satellite itself, which is good news.

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CHOMPTT UHF transmissions have been restored

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