AMSAT's newest weekly bulletin, ANS-298, dated October 25, leads with fresh numbers for the satellite fleet. On October 23, Drew Glasbrenner, KO4MA, AMSAT president and OSCAR number administrator, designated two German PocketQubes at the request of AMSAT-DL: ERMINAZ-2U is now AMSAT-OSCAR 129, or AO-129, and ERMINAZ-2V is AMSAT-OSCAR 130, AO-130. The three ERMINAZ-2 satellites launched October 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare from Vandenberg Space Force Base, carrying pre-stored slow-scan television images and digipeater payloads. Their deployment from the UARX OSSIE-D space tug came unexpectedly early, on October 2, and the team lost two days of tracking before learning of it. AO-129 and AO-130 are active and under control, and the digipeater aboard AO-129 has already been tested. The third satellite, ERMINAZ-2X, remains silent.
The bulletin also reminds listeners that the ARISS slow-scan television event from the International Space Station is still in progress. Series 34, themed on ARISS hardware, runs until Monday, October 26 at 17:45 UTC. Transmissions come from the station in the ISS Service Module on 437.550 MHz FM, plus or minus Doppler shift, in Robot 36 mode, 36 seconds on with a two-minute gap, under the callsign RS0ISS. Anyone who uploads a received image to the ARISS gallery can receive an event certificate, and because this is receive-only, AMSAT notes that no amateur license is required to take part.
On HF, today is the final day of the CQ World Wide DX Contest, SSB. The contest ends at 2359 UTC tonight, October 25, after 48 hours on 160, 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10 meters, with an exchange of signal report plus CQ zone. Do not sit on your log: under the new 2026 rules, entries are due within 48 hours, no later than 2359 UTC on Tuesday, October 27, and the rules now expressly require a human operator to change frequencies, call stations, and log each contact, with robot operation prohibited. DX on the bands includes the S9R team on Sao Tome Island, on air through October 31 and taking part in CQ WW; DX World reports its logs, including QO-100 contacts, uploaded to Club Log and its 80 meter antenna installed. Dominica stations are active through October 27, PJ4 on Bonaire through October 27, and JD1BQP on Ogasawara through November 2.
Space weather should mostly cooperate with the contest finish. The NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center forecast issued at 0030 UTC today puts the greatest observed Kp of the past 24 hours at 2, and the greatest expected Kp through October 27 at 4.00, peaking in the 12-15 and 18-21 UTC periods today. No G1 or greater storm is expected, no radio blackouts were observed in the past 24 hours, and the chance of an R1-R2 blackout is 10 percent. The companion discussion reports low solar activity, with Region 4560 the only spotted region left on the disk as it rotates toward the west limb, and no new Earth-directed coronal mass ejections. It does expect enhanced solar wind today and tomorrow from a small coronal hole stream plus possible glancing effects from the October 21 eruptions. The daily summary put the 10 centimeter flux at 93 and the sunspot number at 25.
Work the last hours of CQ WW, submit that log well before Tuesday's deadline, and between contest sessions, listen on 437.550 MHz for pictures coming down from the space station. Congratulations to the AMSAT-DL teams behind AO-129 and AO-130, and good luck in the contest to everyone still in the chair.