[QCWA] Fwd: Amateur Radio contact between Virginia Run Elementary School and Astronaut Suni Williams 3/2/2007

[Richard Rucker]

From: "Pete Norloff" <pnorloff05 at toward.com>
Date: March 4, 2007 9:50:54 AM EST

Subject: Amateur Radio contact between Virginia Run Elementary School  
and Astronaut Suni Williams 3/2/2007


Friday was a pretty exciting day, and I thought you might be  
interested in
hearing about it.

The Vienna Wireless Society had our amateur radio contact between  
students
from Virginia Run Elementary School and astronaut Suni Williams  
aboard the
International Space Station (ISS) on Friday.  After five months of  
planning
and countless hours of preparations including equipment failures, ice  
and
wind storms and more, we were successful.  It was not without several  
new
problems Friday morning and an incredibly tense 3 minutes and 36 seconds
between the time we were _supposed_ to make contact and when we actually
connected with the astronaut over the radio.

The contact was supposed to last as long as 9 minutes and 59 seconds  
(the
time the ISS would be above the horizon during this pass from our  
location.)
I don't know yet, but I believe that the radio on board the Space  
Station
either had the volume turned down or was tuned to listen on a different
frequency than the one we planned on.  Either way, it was clear that  
Suni
Williams could not hear us for the first 3+ minutes of the pass.

We had thirteen children asking questions of the astronaut and  
listening to
the answers plus the school student president saying a few words at  
the end.
Despite the shortened contact, we accomplished everything we set out  
to do.

One of our Vienna Wireless Society members Phil Wherry videotaped the
contact and the results are available here:

  http://www.wherry.com/photos/2007-03-02-ARISS-VWS-VRES/media.html

He has provided the 10-minute video in low, medium, and high resolution,
making for video file sizes of 40, 100, and 300 MB.

Also, NBC Channel 4 was there with Bob Ryan who recorded the event  
and plans
a segment on the news on Monday (tomorrow) night.  The teaser for that
broadcast is included in Phil's web page above.

Fairfax County Public Schools channel 21 also recorded the event and is
planning to produce a program which will air next month on Cox Cable  
channel
21.

The school had a video and audio feed of the event sent live to all  
of the
classrooms in the school over their closed circuit television system  
so the
entire school could watch.  The school covers kindergarten through sixth
grade (830 students), and only the fifth and sixth graders could fit  
in the
gym with everything else in there that day.  We may end up with a  
copy of
that video as well.

If you're interested, a transcript of the event is available here:

  http://www.viennawireless.org/ariss.php

There are many still photos from the event and we'll get them culled  
to a
reasonable number and posted to the web.  Phil Wherry's are available  
here:

  http://www.wherry.com/photos/2007-03-02-ARISS-VWS-VRES/

Best regards,
Pete Norloff
KG4OJT