K6DUE ISS COMMEMORATIVE
EVENT
Astronaut Mike Foale
was active during a North America and Europe pass on Saturday December 6.
Numerous ham radio operators in these parts of the world made contact with Mike
Foale or heard the ISS downlink. Those who heard or worked the ISS
qualify for a special ISS Commemorative Certificate.
Instructions on
receiving an ISS special event certificate follows:
1) Please send an 9 inch by 12 inch (minimum) envelope for your certificate
with adequate postage or IRCs included. Smaller envelopes will result in
your certificate getting folded (not a pretty sight).
2) Include your
name, callsign and whether you worked ISS or heard ISS.
3) Send your QSL/SWL information with the envelope to your
ARISS QSL distributor in your area (
Please note that this
process will take several weeks. The plan is to get a bulk listing of
QSLs/SWLs so that the calls can be added to the certificate prior to
printing. We will then bulk mail these certificates to the QSL
distributors. The distributors will then mail the certificates to you.
It is not clear whether
we will have another voice opportunity with Mike Foale next weekend. We
will keep you informed as we get more details.
PHASE 2 HARDWARE
Sergej Samburov, RV3DR
reports that the installation of the Phase 2 Kenwood radio could occur as early
as Monday December 8. Once this hardware is installed and the team gets
permission to begin operations, we expect the equipment to be activated.
There is still one
safety issue regarding output power and EVA stay-out zones
that needs to be resolved before the equipment can be activated.
Once this is closed by NASA and Energia, we should get permission to use the
hardware.
There are several
advantages to getting this hardware operational.
1) The Kenwood
radio is being installed in the Service Module and will use one of the 4 ARISS
antennas located on the back end of the Service Module. The radio station
will be located near the dinner table and near the Service Module window.
This prime location will allow the crew to more conveniently use the ISS Ham
radio system.
2) Another
advantage is that the Kenwood D700 radio has a built-in packet system. So
the reconfiguration of the existing Phase 1 packet system can occur in parallel
with the use of the Phase 2 Kenwood D700 packet system.
Details
on the ARISS Phase 2 Hardware System is detailed in the AMSAT Symposium Paper:
<http://www.amsat.org/amsat/ariss/Papers/Phase%202%20AGM03Final.pdf>
73,
Frank Bauer, KA3HDO
ARISS Chairman