My next target is the International Space Station.

While I was taking my ham test there were a couple of questions regarding communications with the International Space Station (ISS). I answered them as I was supposed to, passed the test and went on to other things.

Recently I just snagged a little 2 meter hand-held unit, often called a handy-talkie (HT) and it occurred to me that the ISS monitors the Amateur 2 meter band.

A couple weeks ago I bagged the radio operator if a B-17 airplane and for a ham that is a really cool QSL card to add to his collection but when I picked up the HT I recalled that the ISS monitors 2 meters and that a QSO with the ISS would be a real cool thing for any ham to have under his belt.

It brought me back to the days of Project Mercury and guys like Al Shepherd and John Glenn.

When I was a kid the space program was in its infancy and an interesting offshoot I read about were the exploits of a couple of Italian hams that decided to monitor the space program. They were clever.

While the governments of both the USSR and the US considered the radio communications frequencies to be highly classified, these guys were slick. They got pictures of the spacecraft out of magazines where they were freely available and simply figured out the length of the spacecrafts antennas and calculated the frequency the antennas were designed for and went from there.

They went on to figuring out the paths and trajectories of these spacecraft and presto! In a few cases they had better reception than they did at Mission Control.

While the US space program was pretty straightforward and open to the media, the Russian program was not. The Russian program was also a lot more risky, too and these guys somehow figured out when the Soviets were going to launch and kept an eye on them, too.

They wound up with pretty good evidence that at least one soviet cosmonaut died in space.

Anyway, I really was interested in these Italian guys but could find very little on them because the media elected to not cover them.

It is now fifty years later and I am an old man but technology has changed.

These guys in Italy must have set up a listening post about the size of a gear shed that made their electricaal meter spin like a roulette wheel, and I'd bet they had thousands of 1960s dollars tied up into it.

The other day for $150 I bought a brand new HT capable of not only receiving transmissions from the ISS but I can talk back to them and it fits in my back pocket with room to spare.

My next target as a ham is to communicate with the ISS. They have ham capability up there and use it frequently both so the crews can call home, occupy themselves and for PR purposes. Schools can set up appointments to call them up and they will answer calls from hams if they are not too busy.

Sixty years has seen an awful lot of change for me and I'll have to say that I am impressed. Back in the day I had to watch Walter Cronkite to find out what was going on in the space program. Now I can simply pick up my own little rig and call the astronauts up myself.

I have heard that many hams have used their mobile rigs to communicate with the ISS and that my little HT is pretty marginal for ISS communications, but as usual I am going to go with what I have and go the QRP (reduced power) route and see if I can bag them.

As you have figured by now if you are a regular reader I am an underdog by nature because it means a lot more when I eventually do win through perseverence.





my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/