Some TRW Amateur Radio club history re OSCAR 4

John Koenig W6KQU

Here’s a picture of OSCAR 4 that I took with a scope camera on December 6, 1965. It was launched on December 21, 1965. Fellow W6TRW club member Stan Johnson, W6EKK, also worked on OSCAR 4 and our paths must have crossed at the time but it's hard to remember everyone that worked on the project. I had just started at TRW three months before this picture was taken and I was relatively new to the TRW Amateur Radio Club. There was another club member from my deparment working with me by the name of Harry Gold was working on the power system. Unfortunatly I cant remember his call sign but maybe Stan remembers him. I volunteered to help with wiring up the VELA solar panels. It was really exciting at that time to actually be working on something that was going into space.

We were also working on getting the W6TRW call sign for the club. I think it was issued around that time.

Some OSCAR 4 details

To mark the fourth anniversary of OSCAR-1, the fourth hamsat was launched to orbit December 21, 1965. Unfortunately, OSCAR-4 was the first amateur satellite to have a partial launch failure.

The 30-lb. satellite was blasted into space aboard a Titan 3-C rocket, but the rocket's upper stage failed and the satellite did not make it to its intended 21,000-mi.-high circular orbit. Instead, the satellite ended up in a highly-elliptical orbit ranging from a low point of 122 miles altitude out to 20,875 miles.

OSCAR-4 was the first satellite to be powered fully by solar-cells generating electricity. It also was the first hamsat to use two bands, receiving signals on 144 MHz and transmiting three watts of power on 432 MHz. The first U.S.-to-USSR satellite contact was made through OSCAR-4.

No telemetry beacon was included, so hams were unable to know why OSCAR-4's radio failed after a few weeks. The battery may have overheated or radiation may have knocked out the solar cells.

The radio operated only 85 days. Then, in May 1966, the U.S. worldwide satellite tracking network lost track of Oscar-4, but the small spacecraft was found again April 15, 1972. The satellite stayed in space almost eleven years, falling into the atmosphere April 12, 1976. OSCAR-4 was built by the TRW Amateur Radio club

Project Oscar was the U.S. West Coast group which designed, constructed and launched the first four OSCARs. In 1969, the Radio Amateur Satellite Corp. (AMSAT) was formed by an East Coast group of amateurs to build and fly hamsats.

This was Stan Johnson’s (W6EKK) secretary posing with OSCAR 4 (Dec. 1965)

Oscar 4 (Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio 4) was a regular tetrahedron with edges 48 cm long. It had four independent monopole antennae and contained a tracking beacon transmitter and a communications repeater. It was powered by a solar cell array and batteries but an unplanned 161km x 33000-km orbit prevented nominal use.

Oscar 4 was launched piggyback with three United States Air Force satellites on a Titan-3C. The launch vehicle had a partial failure and placed the spacecraft in a low orbit preventing widespread amateur use. Weight 18.1 kg. Four monopole antennas. OSCAR IV was built by the TRW Radio Club of Redondo Beach, California. It had a 3 Watt 10 kHz wide linear transponder (144 MHz uplink and 432 MHz downlink). In operation until March 16, 1966. Re-entry April 12, 1976. Total operation 85 days. Only about 12 two-way communications were established through the repeater, but one on December 22, 1965 was the first direct satellite communication between the United States and the USSR.

This was an Air Force postcard sent to commemorate the first Quad satellite launch.

Three Air Force and OSCAR 4. The postcard has a typo calling it OSCAR II. Correction shown above.