STS 105 Launch New Amateur Radio hardware schedules ISS Visible ISS QSL ISS Chat Room, Active By Miles Mann WF1F, MAREX-NA News Manned Amateur Radio Experiment, North American Division Hi all: It has been a few weeks since my last MAREX News, I have been taking advantage of the summer and enjoying vacation. Now its back to space stuff. STS-105 is scheduled to launch today, see the NASA web for details. This mission will deliver a new crew to ISS. The Expedition Three crew of the space station will consist of astronaut commander Frank Culbertson, Cosmonaut Vladimir Dezhurov, Cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin (his first space mission). When I asked Moscow about this crews experience with Amateur radio activities, I was told that Mikhail is a very experienced amateur radio operator and we should expect to hear from him during this mission. The existing ISS crew will be returning home to Earth, includes: cosmonaut Yury Usachev and astronauts Jim Voss and Susan Helms. http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/ New ISS Amateur Radio project schedules: There are 4 internal amateur radio projects planed for ISS over the next 12 months, they included a replacement TNC, new external antennas, Kenwood D700 upgrade and Slow Scan TV (SSTV). The TNC project is currently scheduled for the STS-105 mission in August. http://www.rac.ca/arisnews.htm#New TNC The new External antenna project is a little more complex. Parts will be delivered to ISS via the Shuttle and a Progress cargo rocket. The current plan calls for ISS Crew #4 to do a space walk in Q1 2002 to install the new antennas. The parts for the antennas should begin to arrive on ISS in Q4 2001. The new antenna system will consist of 3 VHF/UHF antennas which will support bands 2-meters, 70-cm (a.k.a. the 440 band) and 1.2 gig thorough 2.5 gig. The Kenwood D700 upgrade project is still in the proposal stage. There is a great deal of Space-Flight Certification paper work that needs to be completed. The tentative plan is to fly a Kenwood D700 in Q4 2001 to be used in place of one of the existing amateur radio transceivers on ISS. However the funding issues may cause this project to slip into the year 2002. Slow Scan TV: This is the MAREX SSTV project. The SpaceCam1 software has been extensively tested by the MAREX team. We are now waiting for feed back from the ARISS testing which will begin in August with the current release. The project was demonstrated at the 2001 ARISS Holland meeting and new features were requested to be added to the SpaceCam1 project. The current version of software is on it way to Houston for testing with the ISS computers. ISS Visible: The ISS will be visible this week over the USA in the evening hours. It will come back into view next week in the early morning hours. If you do not have a tracking program, please check the NASA web pages for tracking and Visibility data. There have been several good reports of very bright reflections from ISS. http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/index.html http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/SSapplications/Post/SightingDatai /sghting_index.html The current orbit cycle of ISS will begin to favor the eastern and central portion of the USA for random voice contacts with ISS in the evening hours. The ISS crew is on UTC times, so expect the crew to be awake from 07:00 - 22:00 UTC time. And sleeping from 22:00 - 07:00 UTC (approximately except during docking missions). Make sure you know the difference between your local time and the UTC time. The ISS crew can only use the Amateur Radio station, during their OFF-Times, when all other important work has been completed. Voice contacts are purely Random. However your best times to find the crews are during the evening hours on ISS (ISS crews are in UTC time. Best times between 1500 - 2200 UTC). Good luck all, suggest you get your tape recorders ready and start listening to the ISS channels. Please observer the proper calling procedures. 1. Wait for ISS Crew to call CQ or QRZ. 2. Send only your call sign and wait for crew to acknowledge. 3. Listen closely for the call of the station she is talking to. 4. If you do not hear your call sign, do not transmit again until you hear the ISS crew member say CQ or QRZ Please be courteous. ISS QSL: The ARISS Europe team has posted a QSL address for ISS. Please follow the links from the www.marex-na.org web page. ISS Chat Room, Active: The ISS chat room has been active 90% of the time for the past 2 months, enjoy. I have posted several tips on how to configure your TNC on the MAREX web page. 73 Miles WF1F MAREX-NA