The International Space Station gets an Amateur Radio Call sign.





The new International Space Station will be manned full time beginning

around September 2000.  Soon after the first crew moves in, they will

install the Amateur Radio antennas and transceivers.  In anticipation of

the soon to be installed amateur radio station the engineers at RSCE

Energia have already applied for an Amateur Radio club station call sign

for the International Space Station.  A photocopy of the license was sent

to the MAREX-NA team. The new license allows for the operation of homemade

or commercial amateur radio equipment on board the Russian modules of the

ISS. The new call sign appears be RZ3DZR.



I will post a JPG of the license to the MAREX-NA web page by the end of

next week (my scanner is down).



This new call sign will probably not be the last.  One of the radio

clubs was working on getting 

a call sign from the United Nations.  I am not sure how far the UN call

sign project has progressed.



Third Party Traffic problems:

One of the problems with the outdated Amateur Radio laws in the USA is our

handling of Third-Party-Traffic.  TPT means, can a non ham talk to a ham

in another country, while a licensed control operator is present with the

Non-ham. In the USA we have agreements with many countries, including,

Cuba, El Salvador, Jordan, Liberia, and Uruguay, just to name a few. 

However, we do not have a Third-Party Agreement with Russia. The situation

has not officially changed for the International Space Station.  At the

present time the ISS will be classified as a Russian Ship at sea and

therefor T hird-part-traffic (including most schools schedules) will not

be allowed. (Check the laws for your specific country)



Mir:

For the Mir space station one of the clubs got a temporary FCC TPT for

Mir.  But there was a problem with the agreement.  The TPT agreement only

covered American Astronauts on Mir, the Russian Cosmonauts were excluded

from the TPT.  This exclusion caused international stress during Jerry

Linenger school schedules with SAREX because the Russian Mir crew members

were Not allowed to talk to the children during the SAREX  school

schedules. To ease the stress caused by an incomplete Third-Party-Traffic

agreement, the MAREX-NA team ran a few school schools with the Russian Mir

crew members, with all students holding a Valid Amateur Radio license.



Lets hope we can get a Third Party traffic agreement for ISS, which will

allow All ISS member to participate with school schedules.



















http://www.siliconpixels.com/marex



Copyright 2000 Miles Mann, All Rights Reserved.  This document may be

freely distributed via the following means - Email (including

listservers), Usenet, nd World-Wide-Web.  It may not be reproduced for

profit including, but not limited to, CD ROMs, books, and/or other

commercial outlets without prior written consent from the author. Images

received from the MAREX-NA SSTV system on the Russian Space Station Mir

are considered public domain and may be freely distributed, without prior

permission.



DOSVIDANIYA Miles WF1F

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