Re: 144 Mhz contact made using ISS as passive reflector
Hi Tony,
Ah, good point. Six gigawatts EIRP is certainly a little more than the average Ham station can muster.
So, now the next question... How to do this best? It occurs to me that we should be able to predict when the Station is in a favorable attitude, presumably using the solar panels as reflectors like the Iridium Flares. There are several programs out there to do this for Iridium; could they be adapted to the ISS? For extra credit, predict the times when the solar panels are favorable to a QSO between your station and another?
Greg KO6TH
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Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 10:16:00 -0500 To: ko6th_greg@hotmail.com; amsat-bb@amsat.org From: aa2tx@comcast.net Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] Re: 144 Mhz contact made using ISS as passive reflector
At 11:49 PM 12/11/2007, Greg D. wrote:
I thought of doing this back in October, when all the Sputnik-1 / early satellite discussion was happening. Echo-1, and all that. But, I would think that NASA (if not the crew) would frown on a bunch of folks on the ground hurling a few megawatts EIRP at their home in outer space. If Bob had to have a bazillion levels of safety in place for the little PCSAT-2 transmitter, I would think this would be right up there in the safety category, no?
I haven't done the math yet... Are we far enough away that 1/x**2 saves us?
Greg KO6TH
Hi Greg,
The ISS flies through the 217 MHz AFSSS Radar Fence 6 times a day and it has an ERP of over 6,000 megawatts. It is only for about a second at the peak but even the sidelobes are much higher than anything a ham station could possibly come up with - no problem.
73, Tony AA2TX
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Greg D. wrote:
Hi Tony,
Ah, good point. Six gigawatts EIRP is certainly a little more than the average Ham station can muster.
So, now the next question... How to do this best? It occurs to me that we should be able to predict when the Station is in a favorable attitude, presumably using the solar panels as reflectors like the Iridium Flares. There are several programs out there to do this for Iridium; could they be adapted to the ISS? For extra credit, predict the times when the solar panels are favorable to a QSO between your station and another?
Greg KO6TH
Hi Greg,
I don't think there are are software applications that do this. I watch for flares from the ISS, but have never seen one (others have).
While many satellites (including the ISS) produce flares, only the Iridium are sufficiently rigidly controlled that the flares are predictable. At least that's what I understand. I would love to be proved wrong - I'd finally get to see the ISS flare. That would be neat.
Sil ZL2CIA
Subject: 144 Mhz contact made using ISS as passive reflector
What I want to try is taking the ubiquitous 3m satelite dish and point it at the local water tower, and then find another such ham to do the same, and see what kind of 2.4 GHz links we can establish...
We have a 600' tower across the river, and with a total of about 50 dB gain from the two dishes, it would seem to be a viable way of communicating.
Not much else to do with all these BUD's. Bob, WB4APR
we used to do this all the time on 2 meters on fox hunts, to help confuse the hunters from finding the fox. it worked very well. so if it can work on 2 it has to work even better I would think on the higher freqs.
Robert Bruninga wrote:
Subject: 144 Mhz contact made using ISS as passive reflector
What I want to try is taking the ubiquitous 3m satelite dish and point it at the local water tower, and then find another such ham to do the same, and see what kind of 2.4 GHz links we can establish...
We have a 600' tower across the river, and with a total of about 50 dB gain from the two dishes, it would seem to be a viable way of communicating.
Not much else to do with all these BUD's. Bob, WB4APR
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participants (4)
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Greg D. -
Joe -
Robert Bruninga -
Sil - ZL2CIA