Hi!
On my way to the office this morning, I stopped for an overhead ISS pass at a nearby city park. The 1437 UTC pass over central Arizona had a maximum elevation of 75 degrees, which should have had a lot of traffic from stations along the west coast, southwestern USA, Texas, and probably some in Mexico before my LOS. Instead, I heard only a couple of RS0ISS beacons, and I was only able to get one packet retransmitted by the ISS when it was over my head at 1442 UTC. The ariss.net web site has very few retransmitted packets listed, and more of the RS0ISS ID beacons picked up by various gateways.
On Twitter, Mark KK6OTJ in southern California mentioned a similar observation from that pass. He heard a couple of packets, and nothing else.
Has something happened to the VHF radio and/or antenna on the Columbus module? Or could the CubeSats that were deployed earlier today have something to do with the lack of digipeated packets from the ISS in the past few hours?
73!
Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/ Twitter: @WD9EWK or http://twitter.com/WD9EWK