W5GGW's QSL Page

W5GGW's QSL Page
My complete web site is here....

My accumulated Internation Space Station Information.

ARISS (was SAREX) information
Various Links at NASA an ARRL regarding ISS and ARISS
Frequencies of operation for the ISS

I have a Rollup J-Pole antenna design program that was sent to me. It is really good at giving you the right dimensions and a drawing to boot, check it out!
Some info on my APRS investigations.

The International Space Station has 2-Meter Radios!

The ISS has Amateur radio equipment on it for 2-Meter voice and packet operation. The ISS is easily reachable on a 2-Meter HT with a simple whip antenna and around 5 watts. There are just a couple of important considerations. You will need a good line of sight to the ISS, and that means that it needs to be at least 12-15 degrees above the horizon. A ground-plane vertical will also work since it does not limit vertical radiation.

The important thing is that a J-Pole or other "disk pattern" antenna that gets gain by limiting vertical transmission will NOT work.

You can find out where the ISS will be on a day by day schedule by looking at the Heavens-Above web page. For Tulsa OK, you can use this link to go directly to Tulsa relative satellite information. This web page has links to schedules and orbit information for any of the published orbiting objects.

You can find out when each pass will be, and how high above the horizon the object will be etc. Check it out!

Amatuer Radio and the International Space Station

The SAREX (Space Amateur Radio Experiment) program was started in 1983 and made it possible for amatuers to communicate with spacecraft. This program is now continuing on as ARISS (Amatuer Radio on the International Space Station). Make sure you read up on the ARISS School Application Form which will allow you to schedule time to share the Amatuer radio experience and communications with the ISS with students in a school such as one of the local schools.

The first school contact audio is available.

Other good sources of ISS information is available at

The official NASA ISS web site and ISS Amatuer Radio.
The ARISS home page.
The ARISS Expedition One home page.
The Human Space Flight page has a neat Java applet the compute passes for many satellites including ISS.
Miles Mann, WF1F, (of MAREX-NA) wrote up a good discussion of the ISS setup. Here is an HTMLized version of his writeup.
MSNBC has live video feeds of NASA TV.
ISS orbital elements, and Nasa's Java tracking applet.

The ISS schedules are going to be out on the web links above.

The current frequencies are as follows:

Voice Down from ISS	145.800mhz
Voice up from ISS in Region 2 & 3	144.490mhz
Voice up to ISS in Region 1	145.200mhz
Packet up to ISS	145.990mhz

APRS Stuff

Here are some pictures of some of my bicycle APRS setup. I am using a toll-up JPole antenna.
I transplanted my Rand McNally GPS into a new case so that I can power it from the Car 12v system.
I have an I-Opener in my Van, check it out below.

I have a rollup J-Pole antenna on a fiberglass bicycle flag. Here's a picture of the feed point on the antenna. The story is here.

I took the Rand McNally GPS out of the case and put it into another case so that I could power it with 12v in the car. This is also allows me to put it in my
bike bag with the radio.

I have an I-Opener in my van that I am using as a portable APRS platform. I am putting together some Java based APRS software that will provide a portable APRS platform for all Java capable platforms. I hope to get something out to the world to look at within the next month or so...

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