ARISS is planning a Slow Scan Television (SSTV) experiment from the International Space Station, scheduled to start on Tuesday, October 8, at 16:00 GMT and running until Monday, October 14, at 14:10 GMT.
There will be an interruption on Friday, October 11, for planned school contacts over Europe.
The SSTV transmissions will be made using the amateur radio station in the ISS Service Module. The transmission frequency will be 145.800 MHz FM, using SSTV mode PD120.
Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) has received schedule confirmation for an ARISS radio contact between an astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and members of Girlguiding Surrey West County, at the Brooklands Museum and Brookland Innovation Academy, located in Weybridge, UK. ARISS conducts 60-100 of these special Amateur Radio contacts each year between students around the globe and crew members with ham radio licenses aboard the ISS.
Listen 145.800 MHz FM at 12:29 pm BST (11:29 GMT) on Saturday, October 5, or watch the livestream at https://live.ariss.org/
Girlguiding Surrey West is a charity organization for girls and young women. Girlguiding wants to inspire their members to learn skills in science, technology, engineering and math with fun guiding activities and science-based activities. The Brooklands Innovation Academy, established in 2022, creates inspirational STEM experiences for young people. The age range of the participants for this ARISS contact are 5 to 19 years old. By hosting this ARISS contact they are also demonstrating real-world application of STEM concepts (an important principle at Brooklands Museum) to space missions and are encouraging the girls to complete their space interest badge. The group is being supported by the Radio Society of Great Britain and the ARISS UK Team to establish the radio link.
Girlguiding patron, Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Edinburgh will attend and take part in the ARISS contact to help in promoting the engagement and involvement of girls and young women in STEM.
This will be a direct contact via Amateur Radio allowing students to ask their questions of astronaut Sunita Williams, amateur radio call sign KD5PLB. The downlink frequency for this contact is 145.800 MHz and may be heard by listeners that are within the ISS-footprint that also encompasses the relay ground station.
The amateur radio ground station for this contact is in Weybridge, UK. Amateur radio operators using call sign GB4GGB, will operate the ground station to establish and maintain the ISS connection.
The ARISS radio contact is scheduled for October 5, 2024 at 2:05:37 pm BST (Weybridge, UK) (13:05:22 UTC, 9:05 am EDT, 8:05 am CDT, 7:05 am MDT, 6:05 am PDT).
As time allows, students will ask these questions:
1. Who or what inspired you to become an astronaut and what advice would you have for any of these girls here today who might want to become an astronaut?
2. Do you have any free time and if so what do you spend your time doing?
3. There are many international time zones so how does time work on the ISS?
4. If you were not an astronaut, what job would you like to have instead?
5. What things do you like to take with you to remind you of home?
6. What is the hardest part of your job?
7. How does the food and drinks do you have in space compare to foods on earth?
8. What do you miss about Earth?
9. How long have you been on the international space station?
10. What was your reaction when you found out you had been selected to fly to the ISS?
11. What stars or other things have you seen in space?
12. Is space hot or cold?
13. Does space smell of anything?
14. How do you sleep in space?
15. What is your favorite planet and why?
16. Have you done a spacewalk? If so, what was it like?
17. The spacesuits look very heavy, are they uncomfortable to wear?
18. What is it like floating in space? Have you ever lost anything from it floating away?
19. What things do you like to take with you to remind you of home?
About ARISS:
Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) is a cooperative venture of international amateur radio societies and the space agencies that support the ISS. In the United States, sponsors are the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC), Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT), NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation program (SCaN) and the ISS National Lab—Space Station Explorers. The primary goal of ARISS is to promote exploration of science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics topics. ARISS does this by organizing scheduled contacts via amateur radio between crew members aboard the ISS and students. Before and during these radio contacts, students, educators, parents, and communities take part in hands-on learning activities tied to space, space technologies, and amateur radio. For more information, see http://www.ariss.org/
Those satellite enthusiasts thinking of getting their UK Amateur Radio licence may like to know a Free online training courses are available at http://hamtrain.co.uk
AMSAT-UK is delighted to have been able to accept an opportunity to provide a FUNcube Lite payload, with a mode U/V FM transponder, for the exciting Jovian-1 satellite.
This 6U CubeSat is being designed and built by Space South Central which is the largest regional space cluster in the UK.
This is a partnership between industry and academia, designed to accelerate space business growth, grow the reputation
of the south central region of the UK and foster an environment of innovation.
A collaboration between the universities of Surrey, Portsmouth and Southampton, JUPITER – the Joint Universities Programme for In-Orbit Training, Education and Research – will equip participants with invaluable hands-on space industry experience and training for their future careers.
The FUNcube Lite payload from AMSAT-UK will collect and send telemetry from Jovian-1 sub-systems for educational outreach to schools and colleges, using the tried and tested FUNcube data format.
Telemetry will include data from the payload’s own radiation sensor, along with GPS information gathered from the satellite’s CAN bus.
These data can be used to map radiation throughout the orbit, identifying planetary radiation ‘hotspots’ such as the polar regions and the South Atlantic Anomaly. It will also give an accurate measure of how much radiation reaches the sensitive electronics within the satellite.
While Jovian-1 and its ground station at Surrey University will use commercial S and X band for primary communication,
FUNcube Lite will use frequencies in the amateur UHF and VHF spectrum.
When not sending telemetry, the payload can be configured as a mode U/V FM voice transponder for amateurs to use for international communications.
More information will be provided during the AMSAT-UK Colloquium taking place during the weekend October 12/13th https://amsat-uk.org/colloquium/
Note: This was supposed to be published in the November issue of The SPARC, the Boston Amateur Radio Club newsletter, however, due to unforeseen circumstances, it was never published, so here it is for the first time in print!
It was a busy public service month for
me. First off was MassJam 2023, the multi-state scout jamboree that
is held every five years at the Cape Cod Fairgrounds in Falmouth.
While the communication staff was made
up of entirely of hams, the event did not use amateur radio for its
operation as obviously, while there are hams in Scouting, not
everyone is a ham and therefore, commercial band radio was a must for
the event. Using radios provided by DC Rentals (who seem to provide
the commercial radios for practically every large event in Boston)
MassJam got underway. Net control was a 24/7 operation with shifts
scheduled in blocks and food for the net controllers was cooked on
site. Despite some hiccups, the event itself was mostly successful,
including exodus from the campground was went really well and
finished practically on schedule.
After a week and a half off, it was
time for the next major public service event, the 2023 Head of the
Charles Regatta. I was stationed all 3 days at the Attager (which is
Regatta spelled backwards) Row First Aid tent. A ham’s job at the
regatta is to be the primary link for the first aid tents to net
control and from there to the event’s roving bike teams on
commercial radio (again, provided by DC Rentals) and if needed to our
public safety partners such as the Massachusetts State Police (who
provide their command post for the weekend where a ham is stationed
as a link between net control and them), Boston EMS and Cambridge
Fire. Joined by a rotating motley crew of hams, including our very
own public service chair, Ethan KC1OIP, we made the best of it
despite pouring rain on Saturday and cold winds on Sunday.
All in all, a good month of public
service. I recommend the Regatta as a good place to start if you’re
interested in the public service side of this great hobby. Now to
look forward to next year’s public service season with the Boston
Marathon!
Jim Fisher, AJ3DI passed away a few weeks ago. I met Jim at Winter Field Day in 2022 down in Pennsylvania. I followed him on Twitter. He was a real helpful ham, especially to my friends down in Philly who now miss his dearly.
I can't really say much more because I didn't Jim that well, but to measure his impact he had on the Philly ham scene, here's a few others posts and his obituary.
Ever since I started using Node-RED I’ve been using the standard node-red-dashboard set of user interface (UI) nodes to build my numerous dashboards to enhance my radio hobby and add new functionality to the operating of the station. The series of UI nodes are very simple to use and have served me well however, they are no longer being developed and are now deprecated in the overall Node-RED project.
To this end flowfuse.com have stepped up to the mark and developed Dashboard 2.0. This new series of UI nodes brings a new, more modern look and feel to the Node-RED dashboard along with some new functionality.
Short video showing the new Node-RED Dashboard 2.0 Linear gauge
I’ve only just started investigating Dashboard 2.0 but, it’s proving to be fairly easy to use. The short video clip above shows an S-Meter display developed using Dashboard 2.0 for my FTDX10 transceiver.
Full instructions on how to install and configure Node-RED Dashboard 2.0 can be found on the flowfuse.com website.
Be aware though, Node-RED dashboards developed using Dashboard 1.0 will not work under Dashboard 2.0, you will have to import the old v1.0 flow(s) and manually go through them and change all the UI nodes to new Dashboard 2.0 nodes. Since some of the new nodes work differently to the old nodes you’ll also find you will need to make code changes to get the same/similar functionality.
I’m finding it easier not to import old flows but to recreate them afresh under Dashboard 2.0 using the old flow version for reference.
Overtime I will migrate my dashboards over to the new 2.0 version however, this is going to be a lot of work, especially in the case of my QO-100 Ground Station Dashboard as it contains a considerable number of UI nodes, and will take a fair amount of time to migrate.
I’ll document my findings as I go as I’m sure there will be a few trials and tribulations along the way.
Thanks to Neil, G7UFO for pointing me to the new Dashboard 2.0 information.
Please join us this evening, from 7PM – 9PM at the Cumberland County EMA Bunker, located at 22 High Street, in Windham, ME, for our monthly Emergency Communications Team (ARES) meeting.
Tonight we’ll be discussing the upcoming Simulated Emergency Test, which takes place Saturday, October 26th.
For those who won’t be able to join us in person, please tune in to our ECT training net on the 449.225 (- / 103.5 Hz) WS1EC repeater at 7PM.
This month, we will also be testing Simplex coverage, after the net on the repeater, on 146.580.
Please join us this evening, from 7PM – 9PM at the Cumberland County EMA Bunker, located at 22 High Street, in Windham, ME, for our monthly Emergency Communications Team (ARES) meeting.
Tonight we’ll be discussing the upcoming Simulated Emergency Test, which takes place Saturday, October 26th.
For those who won’t be able to join us in person, please tune in to our ECT training net on the 449.225 (- / 103.5 Hz) WS1EC repeater at 7PM.
This month, we will also be testing Simplex coverage, after the net on the repeater, on 146.580.
In ham radio, we often use Handie-Talkie or HT to describe a compact, handheld transceiver. My first exposure to the term Handie-Talkie was when I first became a licensed radio amateur in 1977. While I was a student at Purdue University (W9YB), the absolute coolest VHF radio to have was the Motorola HT-220. Even a used one commanded a high Continue reading Handie-Talkie or Walkie-Talkie?→
Not clear on the concept. If you or someone you know has an HF station with a goal of DX communications in disaster situations, I have a question: What are you really trying to do? What is the need for very long distance communications in a SHTF scenario? Save for... Read more »
Over the weekend, KOTBTY and I got to spend more time moving the CW key relay inside Project TouCans and adding a power on/off latching relay. As you can hear and see in the video below, the latching relay is up and running! Thanks for Simon Willison for the Claude artifact that enabled me to easily package up the video below.
Ha, that's interesting! It's not so much a video packaging as a video thumbnail tool, which is of course what it said it was. Well, here's the video all bundled up into an iframe ready for your viewing—and listening—pleasure. I'll have to work with the gang on a version of the tool that outputs iframes soon.
What you can see in the video: the Darlington array has two control leads coming into it from the PICO-Ws GPIO 17 and GPIO 18 pins, (the orange and red wires respectively.) Now that we're using a latching relay, we need one control wire to latch the power on and a second wire to latch the power off. Positive rely coil power is attached directly to the latching relay, but the circuit through each coil to ground is broken by the Darlington array. When the Pico-W signals to the Darlington array to conduct for a fraction of the second, the appropriate relay coil, (either power-on or power-off), is energized and then the connection is latched by the internal latching magnets of the relay.
Contest Period: 1200 UTC Saturday September 28, 2024 to 1200 UTC Sunday September 29, 2024.
Bands and Modes: 160, 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10, CW, and phone (SSB, FM, AM).
Exchange: Stations in Maine send signal report and county. Stations outside of Maine, but within either the United States or Canada, send signal report and state/province. DX stations send signal report and “DX.”
Contest Period: 1200 UTC Saturday September 28, 2024 to 1200 UTC Sunday September 29, 2024.
Bands and Modes: 160, 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10, CW, and phone (SSB, FM, AM).
Exchange: Stations in Maine send signal report and county. Stations outside of Maine, but within either the United States or Canada, send signal report and state/province. DX stations send signal report and “DX.”
In ham radio, we often use Handie-Talkie or HT to describe a compact, handheld transceiver. My first exposure to the term Handie-Talkie was when I first became a licensed radio amateur in 1977. While I was a student at Purdue University (W9YB), the absolute coolest VHF radio to have was the Motorola HT-220. Even a used one commanded a high Continue reading Handie-Talkie or Walkie-Talkie?→
In ham radio, we often use Handie-Talkie or HT to describe a compact, handheld transceiver. My first exposure to the term Handie-Talkie was when I became a licensed radio amateur in 1977. As a student at Purdue University (W9YB), the absolute coolest VHF radio to have was the Motorola HT-220. Even a used one commanded a high price so they were out of my price range and I never owned one. These were 6-channel crystal-controlled transceivers…back then you had to set up the radio with the particular 2m frequencies you wanted to use. Because it was such an iconic radio, there are many HT-220 enthusiasts still around with websites with tons of useful information. See the HT-220 Page.
Motorola trademarked the name Handie-Talkie and used that nomenclature for many years with its line of portable radios. However, this trademark has expired, so now Handie-Talkie is a generic term.
The First Handie-Talkie
But the HT-220 was not the first Handie-Talkie, so I started poking around to find out how this name originated. Back in World War II, the SCR-536 was a portable “hand-held” transceiver developed in 1940 by Galvin Manufacturing (later Motorola, Inc.) I put “hand-held” in quotes because, by today’s standards, it was a Hand FULL. But most people consider the SCR-536 to be the first modern, self-contained HT transceiver. The Wikipedia article for the SCR-536 describes the radio quite well. The radio put out about 360 mW of RF power on 3.5 and 6.0 MHz (Oops, I mean 3500 to 6000 kilocycles) using Amplitude Modulation (AM). The circuitry relied on smallish vacuum tubes, creating quite a design challenge. Motorola has a page on its website that talks about the origins of the radio. IEEE Spectrum also published an excellent article: The SCR-536 Handie-Talkie Was the Modern Walkie-Talkie’s Finicky Ancestor. The January 2005 issue of QST has an interesting article by Gil McElroy, VE3PKD, A Short History of the Handheld Transceiver. It provides more history and insight into this fun topic.
The SCR-536 Handie-Talkie
The First Walkie-Talkie
A few years later (1942), a backpack portable radio was introduced, called the SCR-300. I always assumed that the backpack-style radio would have come first and the more compact radio SCR-536 would be later. (Actually, there were previous backpack radios, such as the SCR-194). This new backpack-style radio was referred to as a Walkie-Talkie. According to the manual, the SCR-300 was “primarily intended as a walkie-talkie for foot combat troops”. I suppose the emphasis was on how you can walk and talk, with a radio on your back.
Of course, with technology development, there is always the question of “who was first”? The SCR-194 that predated the SCR-300 might be considered the first walkie-talkie. However, the SCR-300 and the SCR-536 seem to get all of the glory, probably due to their impact on the war effort. However, take a look here if you want to dig deeper: TALK the WALK or WALK the TALK: Who actually developed the first Walkie-Talkie?
This article describes the development and use of the SCR-300 and mentions some of the limitations of the SCR-194: SCR-300 History Development Employment and Details Final Draft This is a big file with many photos but worth reading if you have the time.
Today’s Terminology
The Yaesu FT-4X handheld transceiver
Fast forward to today and we see that the HT and Handie-Talkie nomenclature is common in the amateur radio world. The photo to the left shows a modern 2m/70cm HT, the Yaesu FT-4X.
The term “walkie-talkie” has morphed to something quite different and is used generically to describe a handheld radio. This term covers a wide range of radios, from low-cost Family Radio Service (FRS) radios to higher-quality professional radios. This is quite different from the original Walkie-Talkie, a backpack radio weighing 35 pounds.
The military has progressed with improved communication technology, still using backpack-style radios, now referred to as manpack radios. These are amazing radios that pack extensive capability into a relatively small package. The AN/PR-158 shown below covers 30 to 2500 MHz in frequency, satellite comms, advanced encryption, narrowband and wideband modes: AM, ASK, FM, FSK, PSK, CPM, GMSK, and plenty more. This radio weighs 12.7 pounds with the battery installed, so a lot lighter than the old SCR-300.
A modern military manpack radio (AN/PR-158)
So that’s a quick tour through some radio terminology along with a bit of historical perspective. I discovered there is an infinite supply of information out there on the history and technology of military radios. If you want to dig deeper, go for it!
Lately, I’ve been getting questions about whether a ham needs to log radio contacts, whether they need to submit a log, and how to do it. Logging is a complex topic that can require a long and detailed explanation, but I am going to focus on the questions I’ve been hearing lately. I’ll also provide some links for further investigation. Continue reading Should I Submit A Log?→
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ARISS is planning a Slow Scan Television (SSTV) experiment from the International Space Station, scheduled to start on Tuesday, October 8, at 16:00 GMT and running until Monday, October 14, at 14:10 GMT.
