Amateur satellite ground station: Troubleshooting and lesson learned

Abstract

Few troubleshooting steps have been taken during the non-operation period of UiTM ground station (UiTMSAT) where some of the main equipment and systems were malfunction. After few resolutions performed, the root cause of the defect was detected. The issue occurred due to the lighting strike that has transferred abundant amount of electricity to the devices in the monitor room. This paper explains the resolution steps that were taken to resolve the issue in the ground station. The maintenance is performed on radio, rotator controller, rotator interface, terminal node controller (TNC) and the software used for the satellite operation. The issues on the radio and rotator devices made some difficulties in using the operation software which are the SatPC and BIRDS operation software. Several attempts have been done and through this, many lessons were learned by the ground station operator. These lessons were shared to other BIRDS members during the ground station workshop at Kyushu Institute of Technology (KYUTECH), Japan.