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Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

ariss.org

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Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

#91

Post by pdelbarba »

seany wrote: post #26
stonepresto wrote: post #5

Amateur Radio Licensing at http://www.arrl.org/getting-licensed for those interested. You'll need it if you want to attempt to contact the ISS.

https://hamstudy.org/ Is a fantastic resource for this as well. Along with the various flashcard apps on mobile.

For those that go this route, I found that getting to about 40% mastery for any given test bank is good enough to pass with a safe margin. That is, being able to answer 40% of the questions right every time the same one is presented. Basically you'll find that the Tech is really just "do you know the regulations", the general is "do you know the bands" + basic radio architecture and the extra is "do you know antennas" + some niche/DSP stuff

Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

#92

Post by gerry_shaw »

0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #46

Still saving up for an elecraft rig.

I'm about a third of the way building my K2. Really hard to justify the expense of the kit but is the mother of all kits to build and the end result will provide a lot of satisfaction. I've just started testing the first of the boards and was surprised when it just worked (i.e., turned on and no smoke was visible).

Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

#93

Post by godelski »

kstrauser wrote: post #84
jakebasile wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you only have to do those tests once. You can renew every 10 years in perpetuity. I got mine at a HAM fest I went to with my dad 12 years ago. I hadn't studied. It's fairly basic things about radio and legal things like 'can you use amateur radio for business?' (no). - KD8ECA :)

Seriously? On my technician practice exams, I aced the physics stuff ("What's the wavelength of a 7.255MHz signal?" "Let's see, the speed of light divided by 7,255,000 is...") but the FCC regs part was an utter black box. "What's the maximum permitted power on a 20m frequency?" A lot of that was sheer memorization. - KM6OCD

The technician part I was really mostly physics, so it was trivial. I see that on most practice exams (you do need to memorize some of the FCC stuff). When you go for general, that's where I felt that you needed more the memorization. (I tried to do a tech and general test in a single sitting. Missed the general by a point and never bothered going back for it)

- KK6AWC

Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

#94

Post by [deleted] »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #40
mseebach wrote: post #24

Earlier 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.

[deleted]

Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

#95

Post by madengr »

BlankMike wrote: post #89
madengr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of lids, trying there hardest to get fined by the FCC by trolling hams. I have an SDR here: http://64.136.200.36:8073/

Wow. I just used your SDR (totally cool). What I am hearing right now is simply horrific (LSB brings it in loud and clear). If these guys have tickets, the FCC needs to pull them.

They do, at least one of them does. It's a daily occurrence. As long as it stays at 7.200 MHz, I suppose it's just entertainment. FCC enforcement (as long as you don't interface with emergency comms) is pretty much non-existent.

Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

#96

Post by therealidiot »

gooseus wrote: post #71
makomk wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so easy in some other countries unfortunately. Here in the UK, it'd cost me the equivalent of about $80 and require an effectively mandatory in-person training course that's rather inconvenient too, just for the most basic license. More advanced licenses are even more expensive and annoying to get.

Wow, now that I did not realize... do you know the reasoning behind making it so difficult?

My father wanted a license and found it incredibly difficult to get in contact with the nearby group, only to find out (when he eventually managed to get in contact) that they wouldn't be holding any exams for some significant period of time

Just seems like a clusterfuck to get the damn thing, the foundation exam is dead simple. I'm totally unsurprised by the dwindling popularity of amateur radio here. Even if the difficulty isn't the driving factor, I'm sure it deters lots of people who otherwise would be interested.

Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

#97

Post by PoachedSausage »

gooseus wrote: post #71
makomk wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so easy in some other countries unfortunately. Here in the UK, it'd cost me the equivalent of about $80 and require an effectively mandatory in-person training course that's rather inconvenient too, just for the most basic license. More advanced licenses are even more expensive and annoying to get.

Wow, now that I did not realize... do you know the reasoning behind making it so difficult?

Hard to say. At one time you could turn up and sit a City & Guilds exam, of course to become a bonafide amateur you had to pass the Morse test, but they've relaxed that now. I went from UK Foundation licence to Full licence in about a year, not difficult from a technical point of view as I was working on 500kW broadcast transmitters at the time. The questions about the arcane rules and regulations were probably the hardest. UK amateur radio is quite set in its ways, the average age of UK amateurs is probably around 60. Some of it probably stems from elitism and from some of the UK history of radio piracy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_radio_in_the_United_Kin...

http://www.laughingpoliceman.com/amateur_radio.htm

Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

#98

Post by PoachedSausage »

blendo wrote: post #20

"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."…

>How "clean" is the power?

I would be more concerned about the RF power going back into the USB hub.

Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

#99

Post by tagami »

th0ma5 wrote: post #52
stilldavid wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Chris, Dave KI6YMZ here :) We did a SOTA peak many years ago in CO together! You should check out HIRF-6 as well. Similar payload, and has been airborne since September of 2016! https://www.qrp-labs.com/circumnavigators.html https://aprs.fi/info/a/HIRF-6

I always wondered... This thing is in Class A airspace? I'm sure an accident would be rare, but do airports issue NOTAMs for these?

Yes a NOTAM is required for launch

Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

#100

Post by vvanders »

mseebach wrote: post #88
vvanders wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because they're connected to the internet doesn't immediately invalidate their use. We've got the PNW DMR network up here[1] that gives you tons of coverage where cellphones don't[2] all through a linked repeater system. We had an emergency a while back where someone got stranded up on the mountain due to a flat tire and they were diabetic so it was an urgent situation. In that case just hitting one repeater the…

Hold your horses. The thread is a response to a comment suggesting the ability to speak to someone in Australia over the internet as reason to get into HAM . Nobody is "invalidating" anything.

Yes, but the comment was specifically that any internet connected repeater was useless as an entry into the hobby.

There's an attitude throughout the certain parts that if it's not fm/cw/ssb then it's not "real" ham radio. As far as I'm concerned anything involving part 97 equipment that would get you fined by the FCC without a license qualifies.

I know a ton of smart, accomplished people who would love to spend more time in the hobby on the digital side, but when they run into this attitude it just ends up driving them away and hurts the hobby as a whole.

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