Contact via ISS L/v repeater

The ARISS team have configured the International Space Station's Crossband repeater for a special experiment.

They are testing an uplink frequency of 1269.65 MHz with the downlink on the standard frequency 145.80 MHz using low power.

Essex radio amateur David Barber, G8OQW, has been braving the freezing conditions in the early hours during recent UK passes and has already had some success with this new configuration.

However, this morning, while the rest of us were still tucked-up in a warm bed, David was up early yet again and, this time, he reports a contact 'success'.

David writes:

"Well finally after talking to myself for days on end, and on a day when two earlier passes had proved impossible to access, I had a very brief exchange with Frank, IW4DVZ during the 06.10utc UK / Europe pass.

Henk, PA3GUO and I had scheduled to try the 02.59utc and 04.34utc passes and Dave, G1OCN joined us for the latter, but none of us were successful.
I called Dave during the 06.10utc pass without success but Frank called me back just before I lost access. He has a superb signal through the repeater, maintaining perfect access for the duration of his pass.

Regards

David G8OQW "

This configuration will continue through to Saturday when a school contact is scheduled around 10:35 UTC.
After the school contact on Saturday January 3, ARISS plan to ask Mike Fincke to reconfigure the radio to support V/U crossband repeater operations.

See ARISS update - 25th Anniversary of Ham Radio in Space for more details

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