ISS Amateur Radio Status: April 25, 2001

ISS Packet Chat Room activated April 25
Susan Helms ISS voice
Cosmonaut day, 200 contacts
ARISS Meeting May 2001
Mount Everest?

By Miles Mann WF1F,
MAREX-NA (Manned Amateur Radio Experiment, North American Division)

ISS Packet Chat Room activated April 25:

Hi everyone, as some of you have seen, the ISS Chat Room packet was
activated last week.  And to my pleasant surprise we had both Packet and
Voice contact with ISS during the Shuttle docking, which was completely
unexpected.  Susan Helms and Jim Voss have both been active randomly
last week and the Packet system chat room has also be active most of the
week.

I had the pleasure of talking to Susan Helms  a few times this past
week. The public was kind to Susan this week and did not over load her
too much.  She worked several beginners in the eastern half of the USA.

RX 145.800
TX 144.490

Susan is a beginner at working "pile-up" on the ham band, Please be
kind.
She is try to use the new ham jargon, CQ and QRZ.
And she is getting good at it.

So, here are a few tips to follow:
1. Wait for her to say CQ or QRZ before calling.
2. If she is talking so someone else, please wait for her to say CQ/QRZ.
3. When you call her speak slowly and say your call with each
transmission followed by OVER.

Good Luck and remember, she is still learning, lets make it easy for
her.

Current ISS crew:
Expedition Two crew, Commander Yury Usachev, Flight Engineers Jim Voss
and Susan Helms


STS 100 is currently docked with ISS
http://www.shuttlepresskit.com/STS-100/index.htm


Cosmonauts Day, April 12:
The ISS crew was very busy as usual on Cosmonauts day, however Yury
Usachev was able to take some time and talk to over 200 stations in
Europe and Asia during a few of the planned orbits over Europe.  There
may have been a frequency mix-up which is why no calls were heard over
North America.  (We have a common world wide ISS frequency for packet ,
but not for voice)

ARISS Meeting May 2001:
The next ARISS meeting will take place the first week of May in
Amsterdam.  These meetings are where amateur radio representatives from
around the world  sit down and plan the future for Amateur Radio
projects for ISS.  The MAREX team was very please to be invited to the
upcoming meetings and we plan on delivering the Flight Test version of
ours SpaceCam1 Slow Scan TV project during the meeting.  (lets keep our
fingers crossed for a launch soon)
http://ariss.gsfc.nasa.gov/