[Dxspider-support] RE SH/SAT

[Dirk Koopman]

I am confused. Perhaps it will help if I explain what is supposed to
happen and also what I do when I get keps data.

Firstly, to address one concern: the keps data is a "hash" which is
updated by new kep elements but does not delete any entries which don't
appear in any particular update file. What that means (in possibly
better english) is that if a satellite does not get an update, it will
a) remain on file and b) retain the last known kep data for it. The idea
behind this is simply to allow people to build up information for
satellites from different sets of kep files that they, particularly, are
interested in. I also know that this "feature" is used by some sysops.

Secondly: I subscribe to the weekly amsat kep data email. Every so
often, I save one of these messages, edit it so that it has the correct
'to' address and 'subject' and import it to the cluster. I do this as
the fancy takes me because no-one else is doing it. Actually I could
automate it, but I just haven't got a round tuit spare at the moment. It
is guaranteed that (says he donning body armour and crash hat) you will
be able to load this into the system by doing: load/keps <msgno>. If you
can point to any systematic failure of this, I would like the data
please.

Thirdly: convkeps.pl is designed to load amsat 2 line keps. It parses
the file using a simple state machine. Provided the message is in amsat
2 line format and has the standard amsat cues, it will parse any file
containing keps (including raw emails with headers). The important part
is that the file to be parsed contains:-

DECODE 2-LINE ELSETS WITH THE FOLLOWING KEY:
1 AAAAAU 00  0  0 BBBBB.BBBBBBBB  .CCCCCCCC  00000-0  00000-0 0  DDDZ
2 AAAAA EEE.EEEE FFF.FFFF GGGGGGG HHH.HHHH III.IIII JJ.JJJJJJJJKKKKKZ
KEY: A-CATALOGNUM B-EPOCHTIME C-DECAY D-ELSETNUM E-INCLINATION F-RAAN
G-ECCENTRICITY H-ARGPERIGEE I-MNANOM J-MNMOTION K-ORBITNUM Z-CHECKSUM

TO ALL RADIO AMATEURS BT

AO-07
1 07530U 74089B   04154.67230713 -.00000029  00000-0  10000-3 0  2771
2 07530 101.6830 201.6341 0011923 250.5082 109.4700 12.53568905352095
AO-10
1 14129U 83058B   04154.08291367  .00000178  00000-0  10000-3 0 00576
2 14129 026.4359 088.8658 6007530 095.5830 331.3328 02.05865102157704   
..
..
/EX  (or end of file)

Stuff in front of "DECODE 2-LINE..." line and after the "/EX" is
ignored.

Fourthly: if there is some other standard string in a subject of a
message, which indicates that it might well contain keps, I will modify
the load/keps command to accept and process that message for keps.

Hope that helps

Dirk