ISS monitoring

[One Country Boy]

I programmed in the 2 meter downlink frequency (145.800 MHz for voice) for the International Space Station a couple of nights ago. Put the rig on scan as usual. Just heard them go over. Have not done that in awhile. Makes for some interesting listening. :radio:

[Andy N1ORK]

Nice Jim! I'll have to try that.
Andy - n1ork

[One Country Boy]

2:15 PM EDT now Andy. I hear them making another pass. Interesting listening. You ONLY get a one sided conversation naturally but nice to hear. There is a place on the net where you can track them and keep up with their location at any time. I'll have to look for a link to it.

Jim

[One Country Boy]

Here's one location Andy: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/tracking/

I see why I've been able to hear therm so easily today on my little Diamond V-2000a.

Jim

[Andy N1ORK]

Nice site Jim! Just looked up the passes for Manchester, CT, and I don't think I'll be getting up at 05:00 to get a listen. I'm gonna wait till the passes are later in the day or evening. Last summer, I was able to see the ISS without magnification at about 22:00 from nothwest to southeast.
73
Andy - n1ork

[One Country Boy]

I was going to mention the visuals to you Andy. We've done that many nights out by a campfire. When the space shuttle is up and has the bay doors open it can sometimes be seen easily without magnification due to the white interior. The sun's reflection off that white make it plenty visible. My son, another ham and I used to run some software that told us when visual sitings could be done. Forget the name of it now.

Even if the ISS does not come directly over you, you may still be able to hear it for a short while when it peaks above the horizon at a distance. I just programmed the freq into the radio and started scanning it. I hear more activity on the ISS downlink than I do on 146.52. Hi Hi....

When you're out by the campfire, in the early evening, and see those birds come over, it gives you a good idea of really how fast mother earth is rotating. Those things are streaking across the sky usually.

I'll keep a listen out today while I'm inside. Once yesterday I heard no voice signal but some sort of beacon. They run packet as well and I have beaconed through them on one occasssion years ago. It is interesting how well they can be heard on a simple groundplane. I've even received them on a handheld with a rubberduck type antenna.

The weather has really cooled siince a front went through a couple of nights ago. A low here in the south of 48 yesterday morning and it's 45 degrees here this morning. "Radio" and his XYL picked a good weekend to go campin'.

Have a great day all.

[wa8yxm]

I have not yet heard them but I do have a program,Oribitron, that shows me where they are at.... Problem is the radios are in one house and most of the time I'm in the other

[Radio]

The weather has really cooled siince a front went through a couple of nights ago. A low here in the south of 48 yesterday morning and it's 45 degrees here this morning. "Radio" and his XYL picked a good weekend to go campin'.

Have a great day all.

Yes we did! Had some friends over sunday afternoon for burgers and tried out the dutch oven. Made quite a successfull peach cobbler! Shared it with old friends, new friends and the CG host.

The best DX I got was San Paulos, Brazil on my new homemade tri-band dipole.

We are currently at Indian Springs SP, and the weather is quite cool and very dry. Brilliant blue cloudless skies. Had to go to Wal-mart (20 miles away!) and buy an extra blanket. I'm sitting on the front porch of the ranger station which is an antibellum home to get the WiFi. After the weekend crowd left yesterday, there's only about 5 rigs in the whole park. Nice.

I'm going over to the control panel and blow away some undesireables. Will get a full trip report and pictures up later.

:hello:

[One Country Boy]

Glad you and Miss Kathy having a good time Wade. Will be waiting for trip report and photos.

Jim

[wa8yxm]

There is a program I have on my laptops. Oribitron (Google for it) it tracks not just the ISS but many other satellites, the sun and moon, and displays them graphically.. If you program in your location (I have Detroit set in it) it has a "Radar" display that shows when they are in range, A host of other features and information as well.

Very nice program, very useful program...

[One Country Boy]

Thanks "YXM" .. I'm going to do that. Even my XYL said we need to do that. She enjoys the visual sightings of the birds as they pass in the early evenings. She can pick them out much easier than I. Usually easy to see, if you don't build a blazing campfire.:)

Thanks again,

Jim

[One Country Boy]

There is a program I have on my laptops. Oribitron (Google for it) it tracks not just the ISS but many other satellites, the sun and moon, and displays them graphically.. If you program in your location (I have Detroit set in it) it has a "Radar" display that shows when they are in range, A host of other features and information as well.

Very nice program, very useful program...

Downloaded the program John, I agree; "Nice Program" ... I appreciate the information.

[Andy N1ORK]

Great program John! However, it's Orbitron not Oribitron so you don't have to google it twice. Takes a little to get used to it, like the location tab is where you put in your Lat/Lon and QTH name. Now I just need to decide which ones I want to track. Thanks!
73
Andy - n1ork

[One Country Boy]

I like it Andy. The pgm I used to run was a bit cumbersome. You had to download the elements from a seperate site, then load into the pgm. It's all built into this one.

[wa8yxm]

Glad you all liked it, Yes it is a very handy program. Keeps good track of the birds.

The only thing I wonder about is I've ask it to predict the ISS when the ISS was to fly over in a matter of minutes,,, and it did not show the pass that was due all but right now.

Did show tomorrow, but not 15 minutes from now... I tuned to the proper frequency (Which it also shows) and.... Silence It may "know" only when they will be active on 2mtrs.. Don't know (it is possible to include that info in the data packet)

Currently parked in Davision Mi, last caping trip of the season. No water hook up (Good thing 29 degrees this am) up to 30 as I type. 33 in Detroit. Strung my longest wire. Great signals on the ham bands

[One Country Boy]

I don't know all that I need to know about the program yet. That is one thing my old pgm would do. It would give you data on visible passes several days in advance. I'm still trying to figure out all of the features of this pgm.

Brrrr.... That's getting pretty cool for us southern boys. Lowest it's been here so far is 45 last week, back in the low 50's this morning. Running the AC in the afternoons. We're suppose to get some rain here about Friday, so it will warm up again.

I couldn't sleep last night, so I was up late listening to a friend on 3.835 MHz. Seventy-five meters was in good shape. I read somewhere, maybe ARRL, where some of the a m broadcast stations in the 40 meter band were moving. They sure have. I don't hear the hetrodynes in the General portion of the band like I have for years. 40 meters may be usable at night for a change. I'm going to have to start listening there to see what sort of propagation there is. I'm not much for chasing DX, I enjoy 40 and 75.

[wa8yxm]

Orbitron will "predict" future passes, I don't know how far in advance (never tested it) first double click the satellite you wish to predict (IE: ISS) and at the bottom of the top right frame there are two tabs "Satellites" and "Data" Click DATA to confirm the bird is selected

At the bottom of the bottom frame are a number of tabs Click the LOCATION tab and tell it where you are.

then the PREDICTION SETUP tab, on the left end of that window you can set how far ahead to limit, I'm currently set to 20 days

Then the PREDICTION tab. Click the PASSES button (if not already selected) and then PREDICT.. Next ISS passage on Detroit is 10/24/2008 at 10:48:55 Zulu (About 6 48 my time)

Very easy.. I do not think I read any manual or hepl file (I need hepl with spelling though, or is that help) Just played with the buttons.. Worst you can do is mess it up and "Remove" and Re-install fix that real fast :)

[KC1BUD]

145.800: Worldwide downlink for voice and packet
145.200: Region 1 voice uplink (Europe, Central Asia and Africa)
144.490: Region 2 and 3 voice uplink (The Americas, and the Pacific)
145.990: Worldwide packet uplink
437.800: Repeater uplink



I found these frequencies @ http://hamradio.arc.nasa.gov/

Which has more things there than I could shake a stick at.

[One Country Boy]

Thanks for the info Dan and the website. I've heard it make several more passes but no voice communications, just a packet beacon sounds like. I did manage to connect to it via packet many moons ago when I was much more active. It does not require a lot of expensive equipment and arrays to monitor or make contact.

[One Country Boy]

Got my coffee and turned on the radio gear at 5 AM CT this morning. Just in time to hear a long pass by the ISS. Signal strength went from 1/3 scale on my TM-742a to full scale, then gradually faded out. Heard Mike and Ury (on the ISS) working Rhode Island, Louisianna and other stations. Very interesting stuff. I was wishing I had the uplink freq programmed in at the time. The astronaut was calling CQ several times, looking for stations to work. I guess it was a good time of the day, not many folks on the air unless they were trying to work the Space Station.

[KE5ZRT]

I made voice contact with the ISS for the first time about two weeks ago. It was awesome, especially considering that it is traveling at over 17,000 mph only 2 miles overhead--if the information on Wikipedia is accurate.

I found an application for my Droid phone for tracking satelites that is simple and easy to use...

HamSatDroid: Amateur Radio Satelite Pass Calculator
Homepage: http://sites.google.com/site/hamsatdroid/

[KE5ZRT]

My wife made contact with the ISS a couple of days ago on a 25 Watt base with an indoor j-pole--took the tower down last week in anticipation of our move to full-time RV! 9 days to go!