New “birds” in the sky

Listening to the Maine 12-County net on the KQ1L linked repeater system this morning, our ARRL section manager read off the usual announcements. Club meetings, Field Day locations… but something new caught my attention. Asian organizations are releasing three new satellites on Monday June 17th that beacon CW Morse Code and data transmissions on the UHF frequency 437.375 MHz.

They are welcoming the public to decipher the messages and upload their reports to an online form, and the amateur radio community to use the “birds” to send short messages.

The output is in a very specific format. I’ll be interested in listening for them and trying to decode them, to train my ear for CW. Starting out, I will probably record the transmissions and slow them down.

Frequency and format info: https://birds3.birds-project.com/document/