I see the BBC has changed it to a "live teleconference link" now so thats a bit better. Here! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/7636229.stm

Trevor - any chance of getting the BBC to add more specific websites to the "Related Internet Links" panel to the right of the story? RSGB would be a good start!

David

Howard Long wrote:

David

I really don't think I need to make any excuses here. Carlos and I were there, we know what we did.

We only knew about the contact early on Tuesday morning, so we had two days to get it done, including taking a day off work.

We had no idea about their telephone system until we arrived. We had to wire up stuff to their ISDN PABX on the fly on the morning of the contact.

We made an effort for them NOT to be speaking into a telephone by using the microphone. We could have had them holding the telephone receiver but we didn't think that would have the right image. So we wired up the mic to their telephone receiver on the moring.

We gained access at 08:45. Journalists started turning up at 10:30, demanding audio feeds. As you will know, once the media turn up you have no more time to do anything else. So we had 1:45 on site to get everything working.

Carlos had a 20 minute spot just prior to the contact where it was made patently clear that this was amateur radio.

I have spent hours if not days doing press packs in the past. They are largely ignored in my experience.

Carlos and I would much prefer direct contacts rather than telebridges. But a telebridge was all we were offered.

Journalists will say what they like I'm afraid. But at least we had one more mention of amateur radio that we would otherwise not have.

Howard

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From: David - KG4ZLB/MØZLB [mailto:m0zlb@btinternet.com] Sent: 26 September 2008 03:31 To: Howard Long Cc: 'AMSAT-BB' Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] ARISS school contact

Hi Howard,

Always happy to volunteer but geographically speaking I can't really be much help to AMSAT-UK except on rare trips home :-)

Trevor (M5AKA) is the AMSAT-UK PR guru and does a fine job - after I brought this to his attention I believe he will be in touch with the BBC to have the article corrected.

Of course mistakes happen but if no-one notices them and reports them then errors remain and for something as high profile as this we really can't afford to pass up on any publicity.

In response to your e-mail though, I am not sure why "volunteers" would need to be "experts" in PR - the question asked by the media would be "how is the contact made", the answer would be "amateur radio" - how satellite phones got mentioned and by whom is more the issue I would have thought!

Having been part of a team that conducted a highly successful School contact a couple of years ago, I am well aware of the enormous pressures that are ever present with these things and therefore things can slip! We had two TV News crews and 3 local papers in attendance and we had pre-prepared Q&A crib sheets for them to ensure that the subsequent reporting was as controlled and therefore as accurate as possible.

73