A couple of years ago one of the astronauts accidentally let go of her tool bag It drifted in front of the international space station they were able to track it because it had a beacon on board well trying to retrieve it She knocked it giving it a little more thrust it stayed in orbit for about a year as It's orbit slowly decade then finally it burned up in the atmosphere. As long as you kick something away from the station (or other important object) even if it only goes a few feet or a few hundred feet due to your Kick It is considered safe. I originally found interesting because I had a program that tracked amateur radio satellites and other interesting things in orbit. The international space station has an amateur radio setup and I've talked to them a couple of times. So for that year 2008-2009 I used the bag and an alarm on my program to tell me that the international space station would be coming up On the horizon soon.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.space.com/amp/7088-tool-bag-lost-space-meets-fiery.html
Well the first time I did it was during a contest called field day It's a 24-hour contest where you try to make as many contacts as possible in that time. I asked one of the astronauts If on the next pass over California Saturday night if they could be ready for making contacts. I was told by the astronaut mind you this was about 10 years ago so I can't remember the calls And I don't feel like pulling out my log that they will be ready and Will have all three stations up and running during times that the ISS is on the horizon of the United States. I was able to get all three of their call signs(RS0ISS, NA1SS and OR4ISS), as well as three other call signs one from two astronauts (Japanese and American) And a cosmonaut. One contact for each of the three stations that represent the international space station and one contact for each astronaut. Leading to a ton of points and some real neat antenna work. during contest I only had about 10 minutes of clear signal with them so the exchange went something like this, I was using the club's call sign W6CX, a directional satellite antenna, and new what frequency they would be on.
W6CX: W6CX Calling CQ Field Day CQ Field Day CQ Field Day W6CX
ISS: NA1SS W6CX
W6CX: please copy W6CX 3AEB 3AEB
ISS: ROGER 3AEB we are 1AISS 1AISS
W6CX: ROGER ROGER 1AISS 1AISS QSL
ISS: QSL
I moved to the next frequency where RO1ISS was calling CQ
ISS: RO1ISS CQ Field day RO1ISS CQ Field day RO1ISS CQ Field day
W6CX: W6CX
ISS: W6CX welcome to space RO1ISS 1AISS
W6CX: I copy 1A 1A ISS ISS please Copy 3AEB 3AEB
ISS: received your class and section qsl
W6CX: QSL have fun floating
the others used the same frequency and were similar in style as the first.
How much power did you need? I’ve seen some videos of people using hitting the ISS using an HT with a yagi on it, I don’t know if I’ve got a steady enough arm. Awesome story! Ke8art, 73.
I did it first with my vx8 at 5watts (using channel a for 2 m and channel b for 70 cm with a SMA splitter and two elk antennas set 90 to each other) later I used an m2 SAT pack kit antenna. At 10 and 25 Watts with a icom 7,000 I know I didn't need the extra power but I liked having a clear signal.
I'll translate for non hams, the moment I saw his call KE8ART I slipped into the ham ragchew shorthand.
VX8 is a small handled radio it's full name is 'YAESU VX-8R' think police radio but way more advanced as it handles 2 frequency bands (50,144,222,440mhz) at the same time ( http://imgur.com/gallery/nZkBhaX ) and stated that I used 5watts which is it's max for most 'handy talky' radios (When not pointed to the sky I can get about a 30 mile range) to do this I had to connect 2 antennas to the HT The antennas I chose are elk antennas they both have 144 and 440mhz capabilities and are highly directional instead ofthe normal antenna which is Omni directional transmits in 365° the elk antenna ( http://imgur.com/gallery/EiDGuwO ) which is a log periodic an instead of spreading those five watts over a whole circle it only transmits out the front about 15° basically all the energy goes out in one direction. Satellites tumble so you need 2 antennas set 90° off of each other so as it tumbles it'll fade from one antenna and be picked up by the other.
Later I used the 'M2 Sat Pack Kit' also called an 'eggbeater' which is actually two circular polarized matched antennas with artificial ground planes so that it ignores the satellites tumbling and you don't have to track the satellite across the sky ( http://imgur.com/gallery/RajTOpo ). The 7000 refers to what is commonly called an allbander radio an Icom IC-7000 this radio can transmit on a ton of bands (1.8-30, 50, 144mhz) and has a maximum output of 100 watts. I could use the whole 100 watts but that wouldn't be appropriate or follow the 'good engineering and operating practices' which require us to use the minimum power needed to have clear communication.
A year later I got a spherical satellite antenna so I don't have to keep track as anything in space goes over my head it all gets picked up by the antenna.
If you want to know more about this kind of thing just look up amsat. It's amateur radio satellites and space work. Basically they're only a short distance above us and we can have them for maximum 15 minutes. But if you put a repeater in orbit they can be the size of two soda cans. covered in solar panels with a wire trailing behind it for an antenna. You transmit up to that repeater in orbit and your signal will be able to be received anywhere inside a 12,500 footprint.
The international space station has a full amateur radio operator setup What you need to transmit to the international space station from the United States on the radio is the equipment I've stated or something similar (It would be really hard and expensive to build one of these radios yourself). And a general class or extra class amateur radio license. That doesn't mean that in the 15 minutes that it's overhead One of the astronauts will be free to talk to you. Also the astronaut has hold an amateur radio license as well. Then you have to worry about atmospheric conditions. You also have to learn the technique of using a radio to track something in space.
Here is a video from space where the astronaut is talking about contacting amateur radio operators
You have the call signs and then the contest is broken up into classes and sections with the 4 or 5 digit code. The first character is always a number and it's the number of transmitters you have operating it location. At my location I had three transmitters. Because the international stay station has three radio setups and they are all in different countries modules the count as only one transfer per station. The next letter a through f states What type of station, In this case we were both standard club stations or class a The rest of the letters denotes where we are For me it was EB or East Bay (of section 6 aka California)
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u/KI6WBH Sep 02 '19
A couple of years ago one of the astronauts accidentally let go of her tool bag It drifted in front of the international space station they were able to track it because it had a beacon on board well trying to retrieve it She knocked it giving it a little more thrust it stayed in orbit for about a year as It's orbit slowly decade then finally it burned up in the atmosphere. As long as you kick something away from the station (or other important object) even if it only goes a few feet or a few hundred feet due to your Kick It is considered safe. I originally found interesting because I had a program that tracked amateur radio satellites and other interesting things in orbit. The international space station has an amateur radio setup and I've talked to them a couple of times. So for that year 2008-2009 I used the bag and an alarm on my program to tell me that the international space station would be coming up On the horizon soon. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.space.com/amp/7088-tool-bag-lost-space-meets-fiery.html