QSO with William McArthur operating NA1SS on board the ISS

Hello All,

First of all, I would like to wish all of you a very Happy New Year.

Today, the 9th of January 2006, ISS passed over West Malaysia at 1736 Hours UTC or 0136 Hours Malaysian Standard Time with a maximum elevation of 17 degrees.
I have heard previous reports that Bill was active on voice using the NA1SS callsign, and therefore decided to try my luck.

When ISS just came above my horizon, I heard him working 2 Thai stations (E21QEB and HS3LSE) on the downlink. As soon as I heard him finishing with HS3LSE, I transmitted my callsign, and to my very surprise, he answered my
call!!! I was so happy to have work Bill this time. Bill is the 3rd astronaut I have worked on the ISS.

First of all, I asked Bill, if he has worked any stations from West or East Malaysia, and I am very glad that he told me that I was the first station he had worked from Malaysia. I also thanked him for coming up so often on amateur radio. Another thing that I was very happy was that, he knew that in the future Malaysia would be sending an astronaut to the ISS and he said that he is looking forward to it.

The recording of this QSO can be obtained from http://www.9w2qc.net/issqso/

Equipment used was ICOM IC-910H and 10-element 2M Yagi, vertically polarized. The antenna was mounted on a Yaesu G-5500 rotator, and it was automatically tracked with WISP & WISPDDE. Frequencies were 145.800 MHz
Downlink and 144.490 Uplink, and I was only running 50 watts of power.

Good luck and good DX to all.

73,
Sion Chow Q. C.,
9W2QC