Thanks Paul! We have a lot of exciting upgrades to the ISS Radio system coming up. And we are in the expensive fabrication and testing phase right now. So every dollar counts!!

To answer a couple of the APRS questions out there:

The system has been down recently because of the Soyuz docking. We now have an additional 3 crew members on ISS--a total of 6. We hope to have the radio system turned back on soon. We were waiting for the docking to occur for the crew to do a power cycle.

We did launch and replace the old packet module with a "new" old flight backup unit. As some have pointed out, its characteristics are a bit different from the old one. Some have said that it is deaf. Note that when these were built in the late 1990's the radio system was set up with a tight 3 kHz deviation for packet. The suggestion to tighten up your deviation may improve your ability to better communicate with the system. In the meantime, the ARISS team is focused on getting the next-generation radio system built and flown.

73, Frank KA3HDO *************************************** Frank H. Bauer, KA3HDO ISS Ham Radio Program Manager & PI ARISS International Chair AMSAT V.P. for Human Spaceflight Programs

Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2019 11:56:46 -0400 From: Paul Stoetzer [email protected] To: Roy Dean [email protected] Cc: AMSAT BB [email protected] Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] ISS APRS? Message-ID: CABzOSOqKUEx_mtpj9DFGvE7oe0t8+v3xbU6YQXn5=SCRwFja7A@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

Yes, please donate to ARISS to help make that a reality!

https://fundrazr.com/arissnextgen?ref=ab_48JQ5vYnLCu48JQ5vYnLCu

https://www.amsat.org/donate/

You can even make a small recurring monthly donation if you prefer. Every penny counts!

73,

Paul, N8HM

On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 11:54 AM Roy Dean [email protected] wrote:

The ISS digipeater has been unreliable in the last couple of years. Firstly, it is turned off whenever there is a special event happening on the space station (space walks, re-supplies, etc). Secondly, the packet module and radio are really old, and we've been seeing erratic behavior from the pair (sometimes it's not on at all, sometimes it's on but weak, sometimes it's deaf, etc.). There is a fancy new ARISS transceiver slated to go up to the station soon, and we all hope that will remedy the situation. Of course, sending a few bucks to ARISS can't hurt that timeline. :)

Regarding the switch between the 1200 and 9600 packet sats - there is no easy way. I also use a D710 and it would be nice if you could select a "profile" to swap in all of the path, modem speed, and duplex options -

but

to my knowledge this is not possible. If you are connected via KISS serial connection, you could automate this - but I'm not sure if there are any software packages out there that would do that - at least without having to manually change all the values via individual KISS commands (which doesn't seem to be any better than using the built-in D710 UI).

--Roy K3RLD