Hi

A little over two years ago, I got involved with the ARISS group to do audio feeds from school contacts into EchoLink. I have enjoyed helping out the group by doing these audio feeds, and have managed to have other team members helping with this effort, where one single person can not be available at all times to do these audio feeds.

While I am out of commission myself much of the time at the moment due to undergoing cancer treatment, Tony vk5zai graciously agreed to worry about these audio feeds while I can not. The other team members who have agreed to help with these audio feeds and have done them from time to time are Satoshi 7m3tjz and Graham g7evy.

As it turns out, we have USA direct contacts coming up in May where the schools would like to have the audio from their direct contacts being fed into EchoLink and IRLP I assume. The audio from these contacts will be made available via Skype.

From early May on, Tony will be traveling for at least three weeks, and Graham will be traveling during the week of 12 May 2008 also. Both of them will be coming to the Dayton Hamvention.

I am scheduled to have surgery on 7 April to have my right lung removed. At this time, I don't know what shape I'll be in early May. Actually, I had high hopes to go to the Dayton Hamvention myself as I have done every year for quite a few years now. I would love to be there to meet Tony and Graham in person. All of this puts things a bit up in the air as to how we can support audio feeds into EchoLink during that time.

I wonder if there is someone within our outside the ARISS group who can help us with audio feeds during May of this year. Being able to do that, requires a cable or DSL or equivalent Internet connection. To feed audio from Skype into EchoLink, can be done by taking the audio from the speaker output of one computer to the mic input of another computer. For bridge contacts, the audio needs to be taken from the telephone to the speaker input of a computer. I use a $60 QuickTap gadget from JK Audio to do that interface.

To do audio feeds is quite simple. If anyone can help with this on a temporary or long term basis, I'll be glad to work with this person to get things set up and tried out. These audio feeds can be done from any country.

Please consider helping out with this effort, especially during May of this year. I would hate to not being able to provide these audio feeds when they are desired by schools.

73 de Dieter kx4y

Dieter Schliemann kx4y Team member, ARISS contact audio feeds into EchoLink

Phone: (256) 259-3900 Skype: zs6bbh IRLP: 4713