International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 28-31, 1996 / Town and Country Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) satellite will travel to the asteroid 433 Eros, arriving there early in 1999, and orbit the asteroid for 1 year taking measurements that will map the surface features and determine its elemental composition. NEAR is the first satellite to use the rate-1/6 convolutional encoding on its telemetry downlink. Due to the scarcity and complexity of full decoders, APL designed and built a less capable but inexpensive version of the decoder for use in the integration, test, and prelaunch checkout of the rate-1/6 encoder. This paper describes the rationale for the design, how it works, and the features that are included.