Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

ariss.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 125 posts

Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

#111

Post by tlrobinson »

vvanders wrote: post #73
BenjiWiebe wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya I agree (as a ham). No point in using internet linked repeaters as a reason to get into ham radio. If you have a ham radio, sure, play around with it, but it is kinda pointless. It doesn't exactly teach you how to communicate when the internet doesn't work. -K0COW

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…

There’s a balance. One valid reason to not want ham radio systems to be too reliant on the Internet is disaster situations where the Internet might not be available. In that situation it would be better if the repeater network was entirely RF based.

Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

#112

Post by tzs »

tlrobinson wrote: post #104
kawfey wrote: post #13

Finally, 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]…

There was supposed to be a geosynchronous satellite over North America too ( https://amsat-uk.org/satellites/geosynchronous/na-gso-sat/ ) but I haven’t heard anything about it recently. Geosynchronous is interesting because you just need to point a fixed dish at it and it always works, whereas the LEO satellites only occasionally pass overhead and you need the antenna to track it (either by hand or with a tracker)

Speaking of geosynchronous satellites, every site or app that I've seen for helping aim a dish works by telling you for your location the altitude and azimuth of the satellite.

This is kind of annoying when trying to figure out something like where on your property you have all of line of sight to the satellite, a place you can mount the dish, and a good way to run the cable from the disk to wherever you receiver will be.

It's especially annoying when you have a lot of potential obstacles blocking line of sight, and so you need to have a pretty good idea of the satellite location to tell if you do have sight. If magnetic north is a little off in your area then using a compass to find azimuth could be uncertain enough to give you the wrong answer.

Unless I'm missing something there is a much better way we could do this. You could tell the app or website your location, and a time in the evening that you can check for line of site. The app/site could then give you a star chart for that time at your location, marking on the star chart where the satellite is.

You could then note that stars near the satellite on the chart, and note how to find the satellite starting from them (e.g,., "go 2/3 from this star to that star, turn counterclockwise 90 degrees, and go half way to this star...and you are staring right at the satellite").

Then you could go outside, find those same stars, and locate the satellite using them. No stupid fumbling around trying to measure altitude and azimuth. It's just go out, and find a place where you can see your reference stars, and with a glance you can tell if you have line of site on the satellite.

Even better, you should be able to give the app/site a range of times you are available, and let it suggest particularly good times to try to find the satellite. It can look for available times where the satellite is very close to a prominent, easy to find star (or planet...no need to limit this to stars), or when it is in a particularly easy to find spot in a prominent constellation.

Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

#113

Post by vvanders »

tlrobinson wrote: post #111
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…

There’s a balance. One valid reason to not want ham radio systems to be too reliant on the Internet is disaster situations where the Internet might not be available. In that situation it would be better if the repeater network was entirely RF based.

Sure, if your local ARES group doesn't want to use internet repeaters that's totally fine and probably the right call for them(although I'd argue that you can hamWAN any of the internet linked repeaters as well).

The thing that really grinds my gears is the complete dismissal of anything digital/internet connected as not being worth your time in ham radio. It's actively driving away people who would help drive the state of the art of radio forward(97.1b,c,d).

Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

#114

Post by lb1lf »

efosmark wrote: post #49
pavel_lishin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or V/U/SHF - there's this big, passive repeater in the sky known as the Moon.

(Earth-Moon-Earth communication, or moonbounce, is basically to aim your antennas at the Moon and blast as much RF as you can muster at it, in the hopes that someone will pick up your echoes as the arrive back at Earth 2.5 seconds later.)

Anyone having the Moon over their horizon at the same time as Australia does should have a fair shot at working an Aussie at 144MHz and above.

Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

#115

Post by lighttower »

madengr wrote: post #72
radioo75555 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's on 7.2? I rarely listen to HF.

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/

Phenomenal SDR. How do you get such wide bandwidth on a single antenna?

Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

#117

Post by tlrobinson »

tzs wrote: post #112
tlrobinson wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was supposed to be a geosynchronous satellite over North America too ( https://amsat-uk.org/satellites/geosynchronous/na-gso-sat/ ) but I haven’t heard anything about it recently. Geosynchronous is interesting because you just need to point a fixed dish at it and it always works, whereas the LEO satellites only occasionally pass overhead and you need the antenna to track it (either by hand or with a tracker)

Speaking of geosynchronous satellites, every site or app that I've seen for helping aim a dish works by telling you for your location the altitude and azimuth of the satellite. This is kind of annoying when trying to figure out something like where on your property you have all of line of sight to the satellite, a place you can mount the dish, and a good way to run the cable from the disk to wherever you receiver wil…

There's apps like GoSatWatch[1] which uses your phone's accelerometer/gyroscope to show you where satellites are.

I actually mounted an iPhone holder[2] on my Arrow II UHF/VHF satellite antenna[3] for this purpose (though I haven't really had a chance to use it much)

1. http://www.gosoftworks.com/GoSatWatch/GoSatWatch.html

2. https://www.studioneat.com/products/glif

3. http://arrowantennas.com/arrowii/146-437.html

Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

#118

Post by tlrobinson »

vvanders wrote: post #113
tlrobinson wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a balance. One valid reason to not want ham radio systems to be too reliant on the Internet is disaster situations where the Internet might not be available. In that situation it would be better if the repeater network was entirely RF based.

Sure, if your local ARES group doesn't want to use internet repeaters that's totally fine and probably the right call for them(although I'd argue that you can hamWAN any of the internet linked repeaters as well). The thing that really grinds my gears is the complete dismissal of anything digital/internet connected as not being worth your time in ham radio. It's actively driving away people who would help drive the st…

I agree.

HamWAN looks really cool (I wish we had something like it in the SF Bay Area).

I'd argue that repeaters linked over something like HamWAN are "RF based", they just happen to use internet protocols, and that's great IMHO.

Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

#119

Post by madengr »

lighttower wrote: post #115
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/

Phenomenal SDR. How do you get such wide bandwidth on a single antenna?

Just an active loop antenna.

Re: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

#120

Post by CIPHERSTONE »

wepple wrote: post #101
olfactory wrote: post #14

I can't recommend amateur radio enough to fellow HN readers. There are so many things to do -- my favorite is HF CW.

Any recommendations for a fairly inexpensive HF CW rig? Happy to build it myself

uBitx (http://www.hfsignals.com/index.php/ubitx/) is I think $110 for a kit of the guts. People seem to be really enjoying building them.

QRP Labs has a bunch of cool projects (https://qrp-labs.com/qcx.html). CW is something I haven't learned yet, but is pretty attractive for what it can do, how far it can reach on low power.

Post reply on HN