[GCARC] Cross-band repeater now operational on the ISS!

[Jonathan Pearce]

It appears that the new ARISS (Amateur Radio aboard the International Space Station) repeater is now operational! It's an FM repeater with uplink on 2 meters and downlink on 70 cm. The radio itself is a Kenwood D710GA that was highly modified to be certified for space flight along with a custom-built power supply. K2QA, K2ZA and I got to see this setup at the AMSAT convention last year and hear about the modifications that were necessary for space certification - lots of criteria that don't matter to ground-based users. The attached article describes a QSO running only a few watts on a low pass, so apparently it's pretty easy to work. We're going to give it a first try from the clubhouse tomorrow AM and will report back on our progress.

For those interested in trying it there's a high pass at 8:57 tomorrow AM. For additional passes use heavens-above.com, set your QTH in the user window on the upper-right (easiest to simply let the website grab your browser location) and then click on ISS. Be sure to click on ALL passes - otherwise you'll only see the ones that are visible to the eye.

https://stationproject.blog/2020/09/02/iss-voice-repeater-is-qrv/?fbclid=IwAR0jHNRNyPh67K9w_4Cs5DdxE-r2__60nOSr3CEp4XFoUwVEeHjWXBKOvWs

73 de Jon WB2MNF