I’ll toss in that reddit has one of the better ham radio communities without the nonsense old man drama of other sites..
http://reddit.com/r/amateurradio
73, N3LGA
Amateur Radio on the International Space Station
41–50 of 125 posts
Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station
#42Anybody interested in this might want to check out EME (Earth-Moon-Earth) communication: point an antenna at the moon, bounce a signal off of it, and coordinate with someone back on Earth to receive it.
More details here: http://www.moonbouncers.org/
Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station
#43My grandpa was really into amateur radio, he still gets postcards from NASA when he pinged the ISS unannounced.
Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station
#44From time to time I have heard people talking to the space station as it passes overhead on my 2 meter handheld.
Sometimes the radio on the space station is connected to an APRS repeater which will repeat packets. With a very modest home station (a 2 meter radio marketed for use in a car and an omnidirectional antenna) I have communicated with stations 1000 miles away.
To really have a talk w/ people on the space station you really do want a better station, at the very least a directional Yagi with a rotator.
Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station
#45> A key development is the Multi-Voltage Power Supply (MVPS), which interfaces with multiple electric outlet connection types on ISS So here we have the supposed pinnacle of human achievement and international cooperation, and they can't even agree on a common electrical plug and voltage? Excuse me while I go and cry in my beer..
You probably have multiple plug types in your house. Single phase, two phase, maybe three phase, groundless, etc. They might have similar requirements.
Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station
#46Still saving up for an elecraft rig.
Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station
#47If you want to use a communication system that will work if the Cell towers, local internet, and the phone system are offline get an Amateur Radio Licence. If you want to talk to some random person in Australia using a system which routes your radio through the internet get an Amateur radio Licence. If you want to help out in a disaster then get an Amateur radio licence.
You can talk to someone in Australia without routing through the internet. Through HF radio (3MHz-30MHz), you can bounce radio signals off of the Earth's ionosphere and talk all around the world.
Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station
#48Finally, the moment I've been waiting for, amateur radio on the top of hackernews. :) It's also worth mentioning we've got a lot of amateur radio satellites in orbit[0], and more coming, including a geosynchronous satellite launching sometime in March (Es'hail 2)[1]. Some are very easy to get into with just an HT (or two for full-duplex).[2] [0] http://www.amsat.org/status/ [1] https://amsat-uk.org/tag/eshail-2/ [2]…
Hey!! No kidding! One of my goals for this year is to finally get my call sign. I've been on the verge the past two years, but things with work kept coming up. This year however, this year it's gonna happen.
Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
For (practically) any given interest, there's a way to find someone else with the same interest somewhere else that you can ask to Skype with.
Sure, but that's not as fun as the, uh, "organic" connection you can make over radio.
He's wrong. You don't need to use the internet to talk to someone from Australia. Using HF radio you can talk all over the world just using the Earth's ionosphere.
Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station
#50"A key development is the Multi-Voltage Power Supply (MVPS), which interfaces with multiple electric outlet connection types on ISS and provides a multitude of power output capabilities for our current and future ARISS operations and amateur radio experimentation. It will also allow our Ham Video system to have a dedicated power outlet, eliminating the outlet sharing we have now, which shuts down Ham Video at times."…
Even for things that use 5v USB explicitly I try not to use USB power. Instead I use a linear regulator to drop down the voltage to it instead of the noisy/efficient switching power supplies in USB power units.