The International Space Station has had its packet BBS / digipeater active for the last few days on 145.825MHz. Noel G4PEW asked me in a short APRS chat last night if I had tried listening to it. It had been a long time since I tried bouncing anything off the ISS as I got fed up with checking if the station was operational and finding that it wasn't, so I decided to give it a go to break the monotony of nothing much happening terrestrially.
There was a good pass this afternoon and I received ten stations. I even received my own digipeated beacon and a copy of my reply to GM0ICF's message to ALL. Unfortunately my own transmissions didn't show up on the map and list of stations that worked through the ISS at
ariss.net as it appears that I was the only station gating the signals from the space station to the internet, as the list above shows (you'll need to click on it to enlarge it enough to be readable.)
I was using APRSIS32 to send the beacons and messages and I guess that it didn't gate my digipeated packets as having been received via the ISS because it had already sent them to the internet direct at the time I sent them.
I'm surprised that none of the other stations sending signals up to the space station were gating them during the receive periods. We aren't talking about important communications here, just seeing if it can be done, but it would be nice to have the proof of it afterwards. Come on, chaps, play the game and get your gateways working!
3 comments:
That is surprising! There is a ham about 40 miles away from me that is really big into ISS packet. He gates the APRS packets to the internet. Often I will look on my message console in UI-View and see lots of messages to him from people all over the world that he gated to the internet from an ISS pass!
Kevin, K0KDS
Des Moines, Iowa, USA
http://radio.kdsanders.com
Your interests really seem to be changing Julian. In February you wrote "did I mention that I don't like computers?" but now it seems that your "radio" hobby might well be described as a computer hobby.
Could it be that stealth radio is, in reality, not that good? It seems that you radio pleasures these days take place almost entirely vicariously.
73
Richard
G3CWI
Is changing interests a crime, Richard? Some people single mindedly pursue one aspect like collecting DXCC entities or SOTA chasing. If I go on HF PSK31 there are a few calls that seem always to be on there though they must surely have worked everybody. But there are so many different aspects of this hobby to pursue. I don't see why one shouldn't try them all or as many as one is able.
To be honest I have lost interest in filling the log with random contacts on the same old bands and modes under the same old dire conditions. I don't think the stealth thing has much to do with it. Many people with outside antennas are fed up with conditions too.
It is also true that I am often the only station that igates APRS signals from mobiles in Europe and often receive good signal reports which suggest that my stealth antennas don't work too badly given that I have a poor QTH, on rock, surrounded by hills. I have never claimed that working stealth is an ideal to aim for but if that is what your situation dictates then you have to make the best of it. You should not equate my changing interests with failure of attic antennas to perform satisfactorily.
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