Amateur Radio

QARMAN uses UHF amateur radio band as coordinated by IARU and notified to ITU. It will be used for transmitting a beacon all around the word, and exchanging telecommand and telemetry over VKI ground station (or possibly other partner stations).

QARMAN team would be glad to receive support from the ham community for beacon reception. Details are as follows:

Frequency: 437.350 MHz (as coordinated by IARU)

Periodicity: every 2 minutes in nominal modes (Phase 0, Phase 1, Phase 2); every 10 minutes in Safe Mode and Low Power Mode.

Modulation: GMSK, 9600 bd

Protocol: AX.25 (UI frames)

Content (information field): 74 bytes in Phase 0, Phase 1, Phase 2, Safe modes; 39 bytes in Low Power Mode. The content of the beacon is defined in the attached document.

From: ON05BE

To: ON4VKI

Space segment transceiver: Li-100 (Astrodev)

Please be aware: we have a frequency buddy! Coincidentally, Phoenix CubeSat will use the same frequency as QARMAN, and be released from the ISS 90 minutes earlier. QARMAN and Phoenix CubeSat will have very similar orbits and might be very close from each other in the beginning. More info about Phoenix CubeSat and related amateur operations can be found here.

Useful ressources:

• QARMAN beacon specification (updated 3 February)
• Excel decoder for hexadecimal beacon content (password: QarmanBCN)
• Beacon recording (IQ file from SDR#) (password: QarmanBCN)

A decoder is being prepared (thank you so much Mike DK3WN !).

Reports, questions, suggestions,... are very welcome at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .