The International Space Station

ISS Amateur Radio summary

Kenneth, N5VHO, ARISS Project Engineer said this week, "Amateur radio operations on the ISS have had an interesting year.

"After being unavailable for months, the packet system was able to be partially restored when Suni Williams performed some basic manual reprogramming of the
Kenwood D700 in June."

Since early September, packet has been operational on 145.825 simplex and will stay there until a complete reprogramming of the D700 system is performed. A target date for fully restoring the radio has not been set.
It is hoped that the access to a computer on orbit and certification of the reprogramming software can be finalized for implementation during Expedition 17. Basic voice and packet operations are working but the crossband repeater is not available. Future SSTV operations are on hold until issues related to the system and the radio can be resolved.

School contacts have had a banner year so far with 74 contacts made since January 1, 2007 through October 31, 2007. This is the most ever school contacts recorded in a calendar year. Expedition 15 set a new school contact record for most school contacts by an expedition crew with 39.
Suni Williams contributed 16, Fyodor Yurchikhin had 3 and Clay Anderson finishing out the expedition with 20.

Bill McArthur KC5ACR holds the record with 37 ARISS school contacts

The top 5 individual school contact counts for a single tour are:
1) Bill McArthur - 37
2) Suni Williams - 33
3) Leroy Chiao - 23
4) Frank Culbertson - 22 5) Clay Anderson - 21

NASA has stated that the next several months will be extremely difficult with all the activity on the ISS.

During Expedition 16, three new modules (Harmony, Columbus and the Japanese pressurized storage module) will be installed on the ISS. Expedition 16 is planned to have three shuttle flights, 2 Soyuz flights, 2 progress flights and the maiden launch of the Automated Transfer Vehicle.

No school contacts are planned for the next several months. Unattended operational support of the amateur radio equipment will be sporadic. Resumption of amateur radio related activities should be possible 2008.

Kenneth, N5VHO