Regional Directors, as described in the Data Collection page, had an additional responsibility; to command the HF Transmitter with suitable equipment, as requested by the AO5 project team. This required knowledge of the VHF transmit frequency and the audio tones modulation for the commands.
Those frequencies were not publicised to ensure that the "high power" HF Transmitter was not turned on and off without the knowledge and approval of the AO5 team. This ensured a reasonable availability of the HF Transmitter while maximising the satellite's lifetime by managing the battery drain. This was expected to be a difficult task because this was the first time that an HF signal had been transmitted from an amateur radio satellite and so there was expected to be considerable interest to explore propagation effects. And so it proved to be, see the Flight page.
Those frequencies were not publicised to ensure that the "high power" HF Transmitter was not turned on and off without the knowledge and approval of the AO5 team. This ensured a reasonable availability of the HF Transmitter while maximising the satellite's lifetime by managing the battery drain. This was expected to be a difficult task because this was the first time that an HF signal had been transmitted from an amateur radio satellite and so there was expected to be considerable interest to explore propagation effects. And so it proved to be, see the Flight page.