
Man reaches astronauts with amateur radio - ab9
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/bizarre&id=7685561
======
ugh
All the interesting information is missing in this article. It’s like writing
about technical details of the telephone network under the headline “Man
Reaches President With Normal Telephone”. It’s not surprising that the White
House has a telephone number, it’s surprising that the call was answered.

Reaching something that is merely a few hundred miles away with no obstacles
blocking the signal doesn’t seem very challenging to me. The problem has to be
the speed with which the ISS is moving across the sky which doesn’t give you
very much time to make contact.

Much more interesting, however, would be why the hell the ISS is listening and
responding.

~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
Why the ISS is listening?

Most astronauts are HAMs. Also, for an emergency radio, go calculate the
signal strength of a 1W 2M/70cm radio with the worst possible antenna: damn
near everybody can 'hear' you. Your signal can be heard clearly up to, I
think, around 8000 miles. One of the older ARRL magazines published that as
one of the 'games'.

------
wglb
The article, as ugh points out, that it is very much unencumbered with facts.

Here are some references that talk about the process in general:
<http://www.arrl.org/frequently-asked-questions>

There are other references available on that page.

Several of the ISS crew are licensed amateur radio operators, and they will be
available on the air as their work schedule permits. Often contacts are
scheduled with school classrooms, as noted <http://www.arrl.org/ariss-contact-
stories>.

So part of the problem is the angular velocity of the station as seen from
earth, but with omni-directional antennas on the ground, that is not a
significant obstacle. The biggest obstacle is the work schedule of the crew.

------
ja27
I'm not sure what's more rare: working the space station or seeing a ham radio
story covered by the media.

------
kordless
250 miles is nothing. I had a friend in college who's dad did this with a
bunch of ham radio equipment and a huge satellite dish:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EME_(communications)>

------
naz
Is this a security issue? Could someone hold open communications with them and
effectively DOS Houston?

~~~
phuff
As wglb points out, they frequently talk on their amateur radio as a means of
entertainment. A lot of astronauts that go up to the ISS get licenses so they
can chat with people when they get bored and have some free time on their
hands.

~~~
jrockway
Is low-Earth orbit inside the FCC's jurisdiction? (Just wondering why they
need licenses in space. They're _in space_!)

~~~
kd0amg
s/FAA/FCC/

Also, FCC jurisdiction or not, it's probably within ITU jurisdiction.

~~~
jrockway
Thanks for the correction, dunno what I was thinking there. Too many TLAs...

