Roger, I believe there is a misconception here. Whatever your opinion about the ISS, I believe the AMSAT Board has felt made a distinction.
When talking to the astronauts on the ISS you aren't making a satellite contact. It is a LOS (line of sight) contact. When you make a contact with someone else on the ground VIA the ISS then it is a satellite contact.
I am trying to get the ARRL to recognize the ISS as a satellite when contacts are made VIA their gear not when you make a contact with the ISS.
Eric KF4OTN
Roger Kolakowski wrote:
Eric discovered...
"...and apparently the ISS is not a satellite."
Hi Eric...
AMSAT has never considered ISS as a satellite and has always maintained the SAREX Board and discouraged crossposting so that no-one gets confused and thinks that it has satellite "status."
This has made for some interesting situations' including the release of Suitsat-1 which was SAREX news until it was released and then it became AMSAT-BB news. Another example is PCSAT-2, which never left ISS, and was not considered a satellite.
Perhaps ARRL is just taking the lead of AMSAT in LoTW.
In reality, packet should have nothing to do with it and should be accepted as a mode, perhaps titled "Digital" to cover many of the alternative modes now available through software.
Seems silly and sounds like a turf war, but there it is...
Roger WA1KAT
----- Original Message ----- From: "Eric Christensen" [email protected] To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 7:08 PM Subject: [amsat-bb] Satellites and the LoTW
If you read my posts a few weeks ago about the ACLog and LoTW not being satellite friendly and you wanted to know more, read on.
I've been working with Kathy Allison, KA1RWY, who is the ARRL Contest Assistant & LoTW Specialist. My biggest concern was that LoTW didn't support all the satellites. One of my contacts can't be put into the system because my conversation with AJ, AJ3U, was via the ISS using packet and apparently the ISS is not a satellite.
The response I received from the ARRL on this was "At this time LoTW won't accept ISS as satellite. From what I was told, you have to put phone or CW and it will accept it." which I got from Kathy. That doesn't fly with me. I have asked her to contact the sysadmin for LoTW and that if the admin needs any help with squaring away the satellite portion of the system to please contact me and I'll be happy to help get all the satellites straight in the system. I'm still waiting to hear back from them.
After LoTW is straight, I hope to work with the creators of ACLog to make that log more satellite friendly.
Now, does anyone want to help me take an ACLog and turn it into a SQL file???
73s, Eric KF4OTN AMSAT Member 35360 AMSAT Area Coordinator
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