AMSAT NEWS SERVICE BULLETIN 105.02 FROM AMSAT HQ
SILVER SPRING, MD, APRIL 15, 2001
TO ALL RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-105.02

The ARISS team reported to ANS that the packet system onboard
Alpha has been activated. The have been several minor problems.

ARISS team members have been debugging issues with the packet
module over the past few months. The team is fairly certain that the
TNC's RAM battery backup died shortly after the equipment was
commissioned. ARISS been waiting for the Expedition crews to
connect a laptop to the packet module to check out the system and
re-install the packet parameters, including a callsign. To date, this
has not happened due to the high workload the crews have been
faced with. The bottom line is it appears that the packet system is
alive and working well (and able to support APRS) but is operating
without the parameters installed prior to flight.

The ARISS team suggests those operators who are using the ISS
packet system review the packet information found on the ARISS
web site at:

 http://ariss.gsfc.nasa.gov/

The page has great pictures and written descriptions of the Amateur
Radio equipment on-board ISS.

The most common question the team has received recently is why
can't we change the NOCALL to the ISS callsign? The ARISS
group would love to do this. However, as stated above, the battery in
the TNC has died and all the parameters, including the callsign, was
then erased from the TNC RAM.

The ARISS team plan is to install the callsign when the current crew
has the time to connect a computer to the packet equipment and run
a program to correct the default settings. Both the Expedition-1
and Expedition-2 crews have not had the time to accomplish this task.

Also asked was what happened to the Cosmonautics Day voice
operations?

The only place the team heard that voice operations occurred during
the Cosmonautics Day event was in Russia. The crew had the times of
the contacts on their daily timeline but must have been too busy to
reach for the radio. The ARISS team will continue to ask the crew to
do random voice contacts whenever possible.

The ARISS team is asking Amateur Radio satellite operators to be
patient. The ARISS volunteers worked very hard to bring the initial
hardware to fruition. From an operations standpoint, it will take a while
before things start to settle out on ISS.

[ANS thanks the ARISS team for this information]