ISS Contact

QSL from the ISS
(Originally published in the September 2002 LEARA Spirit of '76 and '88)
A few weeks after penning the previous article, "Working the International Space Station," I was able to make voice contact with Cosmonaut Valeri Korzun, RZ3FK, the ISS Expedition Five Commander from the car, using an HT, seven watts and a quarter wave mag mount on the roof. It was a warm, sunny, summer, Friday afternoon. I had just pulled into a friend�s driveway when the alarm on my watch went off. I had set it earlier that morning after running ISS orbital pass predications for the weekend and seeing that there was going to be a pass that afternoon with a max elevation of eighty (80) degrees, meaning it would pass almost directly overhead. Not only would it pass almost overhead, it would fall near the beginning of the crew�s usual sleep time which meant there would be a better chance of actually catching them on the air. I parked the car and flipped the HT over to 145.805 Mhz and started to monitor fully expecting to hear the on-board packet digipeater at the start of the pass. A minute or so later the radio started to quiet up a little bit and I though I heard a voice or voices. (When monitoring the ISS I have found it easier to open the squelch all the way and as the receiver starts to capture a signal the static gets quieter letting me know I am hearing something). A few moments later the voice was S9 and better and had a thick Russian accent and was clearly working stations and identifying as RS0ISS. I listened for a few more moments but because the nature of split frequency operation I could not tell when other stations may have been transmitting. I tried calling RS0ISS a few times but whenever I un-keyed the voice was in the middle of saying something apparently to someone else. I listened a few more moments and then tried calling RS0ISS again and repeated the suffix of my call sign three and four times phonetically, (a trick I have learned participating in many Field Day operations). I did this three or four more time over the next minute sometimes just repeating the last two letters of my call phonetically� �*RS0ISS this is Kilo Alpha Eight Victor India Tango, India Tango, India Tango, India Tango, over.� �India Tango, nice to hear you. Good Evening, RS0ISS*.� I was dumb struck! Did he just answer me? It took me a second or two to regain my composure. I tried to reply back to him but by then he had already worked two other stations. I listened to the rest of the pass, which lasted about another seven minutes. He worked all the other stations in a similar manner. Short and sweet. I could just imagine the pile-up on his end. I QSLed to ARISS hoping he had copied my call correctly and that it had made it into the log. A few weeks later I was rewarded when I received the QSL card pictured above confirming my contact!

Front of QSL card	Back of QSL card
(Click either QSL card image for a larger view or click the ISS QSL Card page link below)

ISS QSL Card Page