HR AMSAT NEWS SERVICE BULLETIN 327.01 FROM AMSAT HQ

SILVER SPRING, MD, NOVEMBER 23, 1997

TO ALL RADIO AMATEURS BT



As part of ongoing frequency experiments to improve Amateur Radio

operations on board Mir, and to better understand how these

frequencies will be effective on the International Space Station,

Mir will begin a 2R TMP 449;R TMP 463

 phase frequency experiment beginning

December 1, 1997 and ending on May 31, 1997.



For phase 1, a 70cm/2m crosslink experiment will operate for a 3

month period from December 1, 1997 up to March 1, 1998.



On December 1 the Mir operating frequencies will change to:



Uplink: 437.850 MHz         Downlink:  145.800 MHz



Phase 2 of this experiment will use a 2 meter-only set of uplink

and downlink frequencies.  This phase of the experiment will

begin on March 1, 1998 and will also be of 3 months duration.



This experiment was developed by the international partners

in Manned Space discussions at the recent Toronto AMSAT-NA

Space Symposium.  It has been endorsed by the representatives

present at the conference which included SAFEX, SAREX, AMSAT-UK,

the IARU Region 2 President, the IARU Satellite Advisor,

(ZS5AKV), ARI (Italy) and RAC (Canada).   While not present at

the Toronto meeting, the US Mirex team has also been consulted

and have agreed with the spirit of this experiment.



All hope that this experiment will help further understand how

best to accommodate future operations of Amateur Radio on Manned

Space Vehicles.



[ANS thanks Tim Bosma, W6ISS, AMSAT's Manned Space Frequency

Coordinator and Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, AMSAT-NA's VP for Manned

Space, for the information that went into this bulletin item.]