Posted on 01/29/2006 7:12:35 PM PST by Denver Ditdat
Good question, to which I'll have to admit ignorance.
Growing up during the Gemini and Apollo eras fired my imagination and made me a huge spaceflight enthusiast. One reason I'm earning my living in aviation today is the lifelong influence of those memories.
Over the years I've followed the various unmanned exploration missions, but for some reason the ISS hasn't been able to capture my interest. The entire program has seemed too unfocused and ever-shifting in its goals. Maybe another Freeper with closer ties to the program can chime in with a better explanation of what we should be expecting from the ISS.
Will be listening.
73 de K8ZOA
So, this would be OSSCAR?
No Kidding.I remember back when Owen Garriot conducted the first live "Ham in space" experiment on the Columbia. I was scheduled to be out of town the first day so I stuck my IC25A and a mag mount in the company truck and W5LFL came into range as I was going north somewhere near Longview WA. Jumped in and made several calls along with probably about every other Ham in the area. I did hear him QSL a call I recognized from the pileup and that other operator did try to carry on but the pileup resumed after about five seconds.
In the days of U2MIR I was active in Packet and ran a full service BBS. During one weekend I set up a port on the BBS to work the mailbox on the space station and did manage to make a contact and exchange a couple of messages with it. At that time I was using some combination of transciever/amp that fed about 160W into a Phelps-Dodge Stationmaster. Still an omni but with a narrow angle of radiation that has a good signal at the horizon. I think that was during the time after the USSR collapse while Sergi was still stranded up there waiting for a new country to rise up and come get him. To help pass the time he was doing everything imaginable with the Ham station. Poor guy, I don't think anyone has spent as much time in space and he was up there all by himself. When Russia was finally able to launch a Soyuz craft and send up a new crew the callsign was changed to R2MIR, IIRC.
dit!
First flight ping
My brother helped design and build this thing. They launched it 16 minutes or so ago.
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