
Amateur Radio in Space Pioneer Astronaut Owen Garriott, W5LFL, SK - fosco
http://www.arrl.org/news/amateur-radio-in-space-pioneer-astronaut-owen-garriott-w5lfl-sk
======
sizzzzlerz
Had a brief QSO with W5LFL on my 2M rig with a homebrew, handheld antenna in
1973. This was before home computers and orbital path software so I had to
research when, approximately, the shuttle would appear above the horizon with
its azimuth and elevation, all well ahead of the actual event. It took several
attempts before I could even hear him. I had a buddy manipulating the antenna
so he had to track an invisible point in the sky while estimating elevation
and azimuth. By sheer luck, we did finally hear him and which point I starting
making calls. We only had seconds to make a contact with thousands of people
trying to do the same. By some miracle, I was heard and he acknowledged my
call sign just before we lost him. Eventually, I received a QSL card from him,
acknowledging our (brief) "conversation". Still have that framed in my shack.

~~~
twmiller
1973...shuttle... 1983, STS-9?

~~~
sizzzzlerz
d'oh! 1983

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Gracana
"SK" is a morse code prosign meaning "silent key," indicating the last
transmission from a station. In this context, "SK" indicates that the operator
has died, so the edited title reads a little like "Owen Garriott, W5LFL,
deceased, has died."

~~~
Stratoscope
"SK" meaning Silent Key is not a Morse prosign, it is an initialism as you
might use anywhere else in English. The individual letters "S" and "K" are
sent separately just like any other word:

••• —•— or di-di-dit (pause) dah-di-dah

There _is_ a prosign <SK> but it has a different meaning - "end of
transmission" \- and it is sent like this:

•••—•— or di-di-di-dah-di-dah

A prosign is sent as if it were a single letter, without the pauses you would
use between letters.

As you might guess, the same prosign could be spelled multiple ways. For
example, a prosign named <VA> would be indistinguishable from <SK>, because VA
as separate letters would be sent like this:

•••— •— or di-di-di-dah (pause) di-dah

If you take out the pause you have the exact same thing as <SK> above.

Prosigns are customarily typeset with a solid bar over all the letters to
indicate they are sent with no pauses as if it were a single letter. When that
isn't possible, a prosign may be spelled with angle brackets around it or a
similar indication.

This may be a subtle distinction, but in the old days it could save your life.
If you ever had to send <SOS> in Morse, trained operators would recognize it
faster if you sent it correctly as a prosign:

•••———••• or di-di-di-dah-dah-dah-di-di-dit

instead of sending it incorrectly as individual letters:

••• ——— ••• or di-di-dit (pause) dah-dah-dah (pause) di-di-dit

Here is a chart of Morse code characters and prosigns:

[https://morsecode.scphillips.com/morse.html](https://morsecode.scphillips.com/morse.html)

~~~
wrycoder
And the prosign for EOT clearly comes from “key now silent” or “silent key”.
What is the end to a life in hamming except “end of transmission”?

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codewritinfool
I feel that I should mention that his son is Richard "Lord British" Garriott,
also an astronaut.

~~~
da_chicken
That's true, but Owen Garriott was a NASA astronaut. Richard was a private
astronaut.

~~~
PostOnce
Or, if you prefer, a tourist.

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fosco
I am interested in getting my HAM Radio license.

my grandfather had a license, does anyone know a way to lookup call signs by
name to see what he had?

~~~
joshuamcginnis
There are many ways to go about getting your license, but if you decide you
want to go the self-study route, I highly recommend using
[https://www.hamradiolicenseexam.com/](https://www.hamradiolicenseexam.com/).
I used this tool for a few months before taking my exam at MIT. Also, it's
worth studying for the higher class licenses - when I took my exam, the
instructor offered and encouraged everyone to take the exam for the higher
class for free immediately after.

~~~
fr0sty
I would put a vote in for [http://hamstudy.org](http://hamstudy.org) as
another good resource.

In addition to having the question pools available and giving practice tests
it also has user-contributed explanations of how to arrive at the correct
answer for each question which I find very helpful.

~~~
Aloha
I'd also highly recommend the Gordon West ham radio study books, they do an
excellent job of teaching you both the answer, and the theory behind the
answer.

~~~
kstrauser
That's how I studied for my exams:

1\. Read through (and understand) West's book. 2\. Go to qrz.com and take the
practice tests until I could pass with a 95% multiple times in a row, and I
had answered every question in the test database correctly at least once. You
only need 85% to pass the real exam but I wanted a margin of error.

I passed my tech, general, and extra exams on my first tries. That's the most
prepared I've been for a test in decades.

~~~
fr0sty
> You only need 85% to pass the real exam.

Current requirement is lower. Only 74% (26/35 or 37/50) to pass.

One other thing to know is that the exam questions are split in to sections
(35 sections for Tech/General, 50 for Extra) and only one question from each
section is selected. This means that you don't need to worry about getting
multiple questions from sections you struggle with and dragging down your
score.

~~~
kstrauser
Yikes, you're right. It was 74% when I tested, too - not sure where I pulled
85% from. I still pushed for 95% to have the wide margin of error though.

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jdietrich
73

