[CTSARA] FW: Uncaught bounce notification

[John Sabini Jr.]

For some reason this e-mail bounced.
J/S WB1GRB

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Subject: Uncaught bounce notification
From: mailman-bounces at mailman.qth.net
To: ctsara-owner at mailman.qth.net
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2011 14:12:48 -0500

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--Forwarded Message Attachment--
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2011 14:12:46 -0500
Subject: Hit the International Space Station Today
From: jon.perelstein at gmail.com
To: ctsara-bounces at mailman.qth.net

I went over to Frank's house (KB1IFX) to work with him on some things and while I was there, his Orbitron program showed that the International Space Station was coming in range, so we tried a 2 meter (145.825Mhz) FM packet contact -- AND SUCCEEDED. We connected up with the Russian side of the station (RS0ISS). We were busy composing a message to be left on their BBS when it went out of range and we lost contact (at present, the ISS is above the horizon here in SW CT for only about 10 minutes per pass -- although that will change over time).


And now the really interesting part -- Frank was using a Radio Shack discone antenna mounted on the top of his house. Apparently, discones, J-Poles, ground planes, and plain old verticals do just fine in talking with the ISS and with many of the ham-accessible satellites. All the really good yagis and specialty satellite antennas make it easier to hit them, but they aren't a requirement.


Frank's rig is a standard Yaesu FT-1900 (2 meter FM transceiver) with a standard Kantronics TNC along with a simple terminal communications program similar to Hyperterm for the packet end. If you have the capability for packet with a TNC or with a RIGblaster/Signalink and AGWPE, that's all you need.


Orbitron (http://www.stoff.pl/) is a freeware program predicts the track of pretty every satellite up there based on published data adjusted by regular sightings that are downloaded every so often to the program. It can predict out days, weeks, months. For example, we ran a prediction on a couple of the amateur satellites for this year's Field Day for Terry to use. While I was there, we compared Orbitron's projected track for the ISS with what NASA television is showing as the actual track, and Orbitron was spot on.


By the way, some of the amateur satellites include 10 meter PSK and voice capabilities.

73s
Jon
KB1QBZ

P.S. Frank now has Pierre's Winlink station operating on 145.030.