ISS Amateur Radio Status: June 25, 2002 By Miles Mann WF1F, MAREX-NA (Manned Amateur Radio Experiment, North American Division) ISS was active on Voice June 22 - 23 2002 I talked to Commander Valery Korzan on board the International Space Station Alpha, a few times weekend. It has been a few years since we had chatted during his Missions to the Russian Space Station Mir. Commander Korzan is an experienced Amateur Radio operator and was very active during his stay on Mir (Mir 1997, 197 days in space) and it looks like he will be very active using the Amateur Radio station on ISS. During our short conversation, Commander Korzan had a few questions about some of the operating procedures for a Radio contests which was taking place during that weekend. The radio contest is called Field day and is sponsored by a radio magazine. One of the goals in this contest is to talk to as many people as possible by Amateur Radio in a 24-hour period. Another goal is to prepare amateur radio operators for operation from remote locations in case of an emergency. During this contest, the radio operators exchange information such as the number of transmitters in operation and the source of your electricity (commercial power, generator, etc.). In this case the International Space Station Alpha was running on pure solar power and they had 1 transmitter in the amateur radio bands running, for a category called "1A". If you were listing to your radio or scanner you may have heard voices from the International Space Station "CQ CQ this is Valery Korzun 1A ISS". We are not sure how many people the talked with around the world, we can assume it was at least a hundred. I have read emails from Amateur radio stations all over Europe, USA and Australia , all had successful contacts with the Space Station Alpha last weekend. When I asked the commander later that evening if he was having fun, he responded "YES". Radio Status and Voice Tips: Current crew: Valery Korzun RZ3FK Sergei Yevgenyevich Treschev RZ3FU Peggy Whitson KC5ZTD The ISS is currently using an Ericsson portable radio (known as a HT) which is operating on the Amateur Radio 2-meter band. The Packet Radio System (PRS) is using a Paccom Picopacket 1200 baud Terminal Node Controller (also called a TNC or Packet Radio System). The radio is currently connected to a pair of externally mounted co-phased mono band antennas (2-meter band). The typical power output is 5 watts, with an ERP rating of 5 watts. http://www.marex-na.org/fileshtml/unprotopage.html The ISS crew is using a set of headphones with mic (David Clark Aviation style), which is then attached to the HT. There are a few minor draw backs to this configuration. The first is, the other crew members can not join into a conversation easily because there is no external speaker for the system (a speaker upgrade is in development). The other issue is the noise canceling microphone on the DC headset. The audio level is very low and the ISS crew members must remember to "Eat the Mic" and talk loud. I had to remind Commander Korzun about this a few times. The ISS crew is on UTC times, so expect the crew to be awake from 07:00 - 22:00 UTC time. And sleeping from 22:00 - 07:00 UTC (approximately). Make sure you know the difference between your local time and the UTC time. The ISS crew can only use the Amateur Radio station, during their OFF-Times, when all other important work has been completed. Voice contacts are purely Random. However your best times to find the crews are during the evening hours on ISS (ISS crews are in UTC time. Best times between 1500 - 2200 UTC). Good luck all, suggest you get your tape recorders ready and start listening to the ISS channels. Please observer the proper calling procedures. 1. Make sure you are using the correct channel for your country. 2. Wait for ISS Crew to call CQ or QRZ. 3. Send only your call sign and wait for crew to acknowledge. 4. Listen closely for the call of the station she is talking to. 5. If you do not hear your call sign, do not transmit again until you hear the ISS crew member say CQ or QRZ Please be courteous. Note: ISS changes channels depending on which part of the word they are over http://www.rac.ca/arisnews.htm#Frequencies in use 145.80 Downlink Worldwide 144.49 Uplink Regions 2 & 3 (Americas, Asia, Australia) 145.20 Uplink Region 1 (Europe, Africa) Packet Email project: ISS Personal Message System Commander Valery said, he will starting working on the [amateur radio] packet system, he needs to get Winpac [software tool] loaded onto his new computer. The next day the packet Email system was on line. Related NASA indexes: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/index.html http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/SSapplications/Post/SightingD ata/sighting_index.html ISS QSL: The ARISS Europe team has posted a QSL address for ISS. Please follow the links from the www.marex-na.org web page. 73 Miles WF1F MAREX-NA Copyright 2001 Miles Mann, All Rights Reserved. This document may be freely distributed via the following means - Email (including listservers), Usenet, and 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. Until we meet again DOSVIDANIYA Miles WF1F