Help a polar explorer

British adventurer Pen Haddow has enlisted the help of radio amateurs for his next expedition.

Pen made headlines a couple of years ago when he became the first person to solo trek from Canada to the North Pole.

Now he is planning an even more audacious journey for the Spring of 2007. He will walk from Siberia in Russia to the North Pole and then onto Canada – a total of 955 miles across some of the Earth’s most treacherous terrain. The aim of the trip is not just to set a new record but also to undertake research into the effect of global warming on the Arctic Ocean ice cap.

Pen intends to broadcast 10-60 minutes of video of his journey each day to a website. But achieving this is not a simple matter. The remote locations means that the only satellite network Pen is able to access is the Iridium array. Iridium satellite phones only offer data rates of 2Kbytes/s and this would not be sufficient for Pen’s purpose, even if the video were compressed before transmission.

This is where amateur radio could come to the rescue. Pen has sought the advice of radio amateurs – including Trevor Brown, G8CJS, and Perran Newman, G3UUU – on finding a method of providing medium speed data transfer by radio in the Arctic.

A suitable solution has yet to be found, and any amateurs with ideas of how such a system can be achieved are urged to send details (including suggested frequencies, bandwidth, likely operational range, antennas etc) to Perran at e-mail address: pvlnewman@<no spam>aol.com.

Amateurs should bear in mind that any system should weigh a maximum of 5kg and must remain operational for the 100-odd days that the expedition is expected to take

Source: GB2RS News - Courtesy of the RSGB