Comments on making general contacts 

I have been seeing a lot of traffic on Facebook and I suspect on other social media sites with people asking why they are not hearing the crew make general contacts.  First off the crew is very busy on the ISS and they simply may not have the time to just pick up the microphone and talk.  Also, one needs to be aware of their normal daily schedule.  I have listed below the constraints that we at ARISS have to follow in order to schedule the school contacts.  Hopefully this will help you better schedule your opportunities.

Typical daily schedule

Wakeup to Workday start= 1.5 hours

Workday start to Workday end=12 hours

Workday end to Sleep= 2 hours

Sleep to wakeup= 8.5 hours

The crew's usual waking period is 0730 - 1930 UTC. The most common times to find a crew member making casual periods are about one hour after waking and before sleeping, when they have personal time. They're usually free most of the weekend, as well.

SSTV events are not that often.  So please check out https://www.ariss.org/ for the latest information or watch for the ARISS announcements. 

And don’t forget that the packet system is active. 

As always, if there is an EVA, a docking, or an undocking; the ARISS radios are turned off as part of the safety protocol.

The latest information on the operation mode can be found at https://www.ariss.org/current-status-of-iss-stations.html

The latest list of frequencies in use can be found at https://www.ariss.org/contact-the-iss.html

We at ARISS can not make a crewmember make general contacts.  We have sometimes suggested that someone might want to be on the air for something like Field Day or Jamboree on the Air, but again we have limits.  We work with the ISS planners to get the school contacts scheduled as those contacts are actually during scheduled time off that gets made up later in the day.  Some of the crewmembers played ham radio on earth many times and are wanting to make general contacts; others may have gotten their license just so that they could have contacts with the various schools under the ARISS program and might not want to make general contacts. 

Contrary to one comment I have seen, they are not just active over Europe.  It just depends on their work schedule, the orbital track, time of day, and many other factors.  As shown above for the time constraints, this means that a contact might be possible from 07:30-08:30 UTC and 18:30-19:30 UTC.  If you are in an area that is pretty sparse and the orbital track and possible contact times all fit, then by all means give a call to the ISS.  You just never know what might happen.

So the only thing we can suggest is to listen and if they are on the radio, then go for it.  In the meantime, the cross-band repeater is pretty active.   You just never know if a crewmember hears a lot of chatter on the cross-band and decides to pickup the microphone and join the fun.

73,

Charlie Sufana AJ9N

One of the ARISS mentors