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Transmission from space…
18 January 2012 | by Andre Kuipers is a Dutch astronaut in space at the ISS at the moment. Since he’s Dutch he is the operator behind the HAM radio when skeds are made with Dutch and Belgian schools. His call is PI9ISS. Today he was answering some questions from Belgian students. I knew that the contact was actually made from Belgium this time so there was a chance to receive him. Since I was on the job I was not able to listen to the full session but managed to hear some of the overs. Of course my colleague had to listen to it as well, actually at first he didn’t even believe it was Andre from space till he listened a few overs. The signal was most of the time full scale, after 10 minutes it went down fast and I lost PI9ISS in the noise.
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| Radio Netherlands relaystation entrance |
Well I was home this afternoon cleaning the temporarely radioshack a bit. And had of course the radio on receive. I suddenly heard PJ4B from Bonaire Isl. on 12m SSB in a small pile-up. PJ4B was again transmitting from he Radio Netherlands Relay station site and used the commercial antennesystem. They told that it had a gain of 21dB over a normal dipole. Very nice steady signal peaking S7 here on the horizontal loop antenna. They were asking another Dutch station (PE2MC) what the difference was between signals of PJ4C and their signal. I couldn’t hear what Marco was telling but it must be a large difference as I couldn’t even hear PJ4C who was a few KHz down. Well, PJ4NX Peter was on the mike when he was calling for Dutch stations, so I had a easy chance to make the QSO.
3 Responses to “Transmission from space…”
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I had the pleasure to speak, although briefly, with Col. Doug (Wheels) Wheelock, Cmdr. Expedition 25, on Monday October 11, 2010 @ 11:59 utc. It proved to be the highlight of my amateur radio experiance, which sparked an ISS contact frenzy from my area, the Delmarva Penninsula, with some additional interest in the Satellites!
It would be nice if the hams on board the ISS would open up the airways with the opportunity for open contacts, as Col. Wheelock had done! I understand it is all up to the individuals and their work/time schedules.
Good Luck & 73 from, Radioactive Southeast Milford, Northeast Sussex County, Delaware! Terry/W3TRY…….
Hello Terry, tnx for your comment. Not many had the opportunity to actually talk to the crew of the ISS. So I can imagine it was a amateur radio highlight for you. The HAMs on board have very limited free time and many of them prefer internet as a communication device. Actually HAM radio is onboard for those situations that all other communication fails in case of emergency, at least that is what Andre told. 73, Bas PE4BAS
Couldn?t be wtetrin any better. Reading this post reminds me of my old room mate! He always kept talking about this. I will forward this article to him. Pretty sure he will have a good read. Thanks for sharing!