ISS SSTV Operations Planned for October 12 from 18:00-21:00 UTC. This is your opportunity...
Due to hightened interest to the general Ham radio community for this mission, I again suggest that all Shuttle Audio Retransmission Faclities consider adding an old TNC and 144.39MHz APRS beacon to their system. This TNC will alert all surrounding mobiles (with APRS display radios D7, D700, D710, VX8R, HAMHUD's, etc) that the retransmission is on the air and what frequency to tune.
Just load the correct beacon text, set the rate to 1 minute and connect the TNC's XCD (external carrier detect) to the re-trans PTT line, then whenever the re-trans is on the air, then a 1 minute announcement beacon will show up on all surrounding radios.
You may have to invert the sense of the XCD line. Here is a web page on this APRS local alert system: www.aprs.org/On-Air-beacons.html
I appologize for repeating myself, but no sense in adding this system after the Shuttle is back on the ground! Now's the time!
Here Is how it can look on the front panel of an APRS radio to mobiles in the area:
+------------+ | 147.45NAN | | SAREX ReTX | | SSTV ops | | Goddard | +------------+
Where 147.45NAN is the retrans freq for the WA3NAN radio club at NASA Goddard, for example.
A nice reminder that HAM Radio is again active in SPACE!
Bob, Wb4APR