I have been monitoring OSCAR-11 since it's launch on 01-March-1984. This is a collection of telemetry data collected during that time, which I am slowly building into an archive, starting with the most recent data. Files for the last ten years, will follow. Finally, the early data will be added. The early data will take longer to archive, and may be rather patchy!
The telemetry data has been zipped into a single file, one for each year. Each zip file contains many files of the data. They are labeled YYDNNN.RAW
Where YY is the year, NNN is the day number on which the telemetry was received. Usually there is a single file for one day, captured on a single pass. If more than one pass has been captured, then A, B, C etc. will be added to the file name.
Telemetry captured after 24 July 2002 has the file name format YYMMDDT.RAW where YY is the year, MM month, DD day.
The data is mainly ASCII, but some binary files may be included. Binary files will have the extension BIN.
Each package contains an information file, eg. README99.1ST. This contains important information about the status of the satellite during the year. The date in the ASCII telemetry in currently in error by three days. Details of when the date incremented are included, also calibration points for the satellite's realtime clock, which has been slowly incrementing since launch.
The lengths of the telemetry files are rather variable, in most cases there are about six good telemetry frames. However, since I decided to produce this archive I have included the full sequence of telemetry for each pass (whenever possible). Also included in these recent telemetry files is the ASCII status frame at the end of the telemetry sequence, which provides some general information.
Users should note that unless otherwise stated in the YYreadme files the data has been received at Hitchin, UK. Locator IO91UX, 51.975 N, 0.29 W.
Problems frequently occur when OSCAR-11 ASCII data and text is captured and decoded with various programs. This is due to the variation of format between individual parts of the OSCAR-11 diary sequence, characteristics of individual capture programs, and method of data storage.
The method used here is to capture the data as 7 bit ASCII, even parity. Then to remove all characters except CR, LF, and ASCII codes 20 (hex)to 7E (hex) inclusive. This is the same format as my CTERM capture program produces. The data files should therefore be compatible with the simple BASIC decoding program included in U2TM.ZIP available on this website. Other telemetry decoders may require some processing of the data before use.
The quality of the data is variable, some files contain almost perfect data, others may have many errors. The simple program for decoding telemetry U2TM, is very sensitive to errors in the input data. There is therefore much scope for writing an intelligent program to minimise the effect of errors. Very poor telemetry can usually be decoded manually.
It is just possible that the odd file may be wrongly labeled. If you find any such errors, please e-mail me, so that I can correct them.
xxx@amsat.org (please replace the xx's by G3CWV )