CW Beacon

ARICA-2 will periodically transmit CW beacons during operation.

The following four CW signals will be transmitted sequentially from ARICA-2, and we would appreciate your cooperation in receiving them. We are also planning to distribute QSL cards to those who assist us by submitting reception reports.

CW Beacon Details 

First, the call sign “CQ CQ DE JS1YSD ARICA2” will be transmitted, followed by CW1 through CW3 in sequence.

In normal operation, the satellite repeatedly transmits each data segment—from the call sign through CW3—for approximately 10 seconds, followed by 25 seconds in receive mode (Fig. 1). Due to the specifications of the onboard transceiver, only one of the following three modes can operate at any given time: CW transmit mode, GMSK receive mode, or GMSK transmit mode. Therefore, the satellite alternates between 10 seconds of CW transmit mode and 25 seconds of GMSK receive mode, so that it is clear that, once the CW data transmission has finished, the onboard transceiver is in a state ready to accept a GMSK uplink from the ground.

The CW data to be transmitted is divided into four parts—the call sign, CW housekeeping data ① (CW1), CW housekeeping data ② (CW2), and CW housekeeping data ③ (CW3)—which are then transmitted sequentially. Figure 2 shows the format of each CW data segment, Figure 3 provides the details of each data segment, and Figure 4 presents the correspondence table for the angular velocity data.

Figure 1. Data transmission cycle during normal operation of the ARICA-2 UHF transceiver.

Figure 2. Data formats of CW1, CW2, and CW3.

Figure 3. Details of each CW data segment.

Please report any received data on the reception report page below.