[GCARC] ISS astronaut QSOs possible today

[Jon Pearce]

Several hams reported on Facebook that they had QSOs with an ISS astronaut yesterday, and apparently astronauts often have time on holidays for operating. Check out https://heavens-above.com/PassSummary.aspx?satid=25544 for exact pass times - it looks like there are passes in the late afternoon today. (Be sure to put your lat and long into the login box at the top right of the screen.)

For these QSOs astronauts use the FM repeater frequencies of 145.99 mhz uplink with PL tone of 67 hz and a downlink of 437.80 mhz so you'll need two UHF/VHF FM rigs or one full-duplex rig. You should be able to hear the downlink easily so you can probably use an HT and use a higher-powered rig for the uplink. Astronauts use the callsign NA1SS.

I may head to the Clubhouse this afternoon to see if we can make contact if anyone else is interested. Email me and let me know.

Also on the ISS is the APRS repeater that's active for all passes. That's a lot easier to work and K2ZA has done it with a FT1D HT transmitting APRS packets with "ARISS" as the VIA callsign. That's on 145.825 simplex.

Info on the ISS ham station is at https://www.ariss.org/.

73 de Jon WB2MNF