Hams in Space!

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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --1 Photo E. Fifth grader Crystal Sruan ofEverett, Washington, anxiously waiting to talk: with WA4SIR. Thousands of students in the Mukilteo School District #6 listened in ~'ia 2 meter rigs, donated bJ ICOM, located in many area schools. The Evrrgreen tmerne (linked repeaters connecting Ihe nanhwest U.S. and Canadai allowed students in Washington, Oregon, tdaha, MOn/ana and Canada 10 listen as well. Photo courtesy of Larry Lucht W7KZ£. problems aboard the orbiter, Ron wasn't able to record the conversation or copy down the callsign. If you' re that ham or know who it was, please contact Ron! During the mission Ron had the chance to make several sets of voice passes over the U.S.• a couple of passes over Australia, and two over South Africa. Ron even made contacts with some portable rigs. When Ron tried a few free-for-all uplink contacts. literally thousands of hams transmitted at once on one uplink frequency. Ron said at times it sounded just like white noise on his end. Besides individuals, Ron made 28 prearranged contacts with student groups around the country, prima rily via voice relays through Australia (VK2AS, VK5AGR and VK6IU) or Brazil (PY2BJO), although one contact was made directly from the Columbia . One of the teachers at Tampa Palms Elementary School in Tampa Florida is Cathy Blair, astronaut Sam Durrance's sister. At 8:42 p.m . EST on December 8 (6 days 18 hrs. 55 minutes MET), Ron called Lee Paulet KB4 FBX, who had set up a rig in the schoolyard with the assistance of Robert Osband N4SCY. With the help of two other hams. N4SCY provided a realtime computer display showing the shunles position. 56 73 Amateur Radio toasv » March,1991 After Ron made the initial contact with Lee, he passed over the handset to Sam, who talked to th e stude nts fo r about four minutes, before the shutt le went out of range. Ron said, " It was na tura l 10 let him {Sam)talk 10 the kids and answer the questions .': Though it was a Saturday evening , approximately 200 300 students came over with their families to hear the shuttle in person. Local and regional newspapers , rad io stations. CNN and television stations from all three net works covered the contact. Several stude nts asked Sam questions about life aboard the shuttle. and everybod y was e ntertained- and educated. While the contact look up fou r minutes of valuable shuttle lime. it helped ed ucate hu ndreds of students, and indirectly affected thousands of others who learned about this SAREX contact with a small elementary school in Florida. This is one of the fine examples of how the SAREX experiment has helped educate the public about the space program and ham radio activities. Packet Robot One of the most exciting aspects of the flight was the capabil ity to ope rate the SAREX experiment almost 16 hours a day, even when Ron was on duty. Packet radio made it possible fo r Ron to leave the rig running as a mini-packet BBS while he was busy working with the Astro telescopes. (For details about SAREX hardware and procedures, see the anicle " SAREX-90" in the May '90 issue of 73 Maga:Jne. ) The SAREX TNC held two lists of contacts: a work list .....ith a capacity fo r 6(X) confirmed QSOs, and a heard log for up t0 32 incomplete QSOs. The work list holds the names of the 238 lucky hams who completed the entire contact, acknowledgment, and receipt of acknowledgment procedure (see " Hamsats" in this issue). The heard log held the last 32 hams who made contact, but who hadn't completed the entire procedure. The heard log was broadcast as a QRZ beacon with its current list. Whenever Ron got a chance in betweenobservationson the shuttle's fl ight deck, he would go down to the middcck where the SAREX experiment was located and dump the heard log from the TNC to the PGSC (Payload General Support Computer), a modified GRID laptop computer. The PGSC, onboard the shuttle since 1983, has proven itsel f so useful in monitoring experiments and collecting data that NASA is planning to replace the French-built DDS (Data Display System) Space1ab computers with them. Ultimately , Ron got 672 callsigns in the stored heard log, including duplicates. The ROBOT's counter exceeded 1700 contacts. Unfortunately , he couldn't constantly dump the log, and it kept overflowing. The only record of the lost log entries is the QRZ beacons, and they' re needed to reconstruct the log. Ron tol d me , "We need any QRZ beacons that anybody ' s got on disk or in hardcopy ." If you've received and copied a QRZ beacon PLEASE send a hard copy to the ARRL, 225 Main St.. Newington CT 06111 . Or send it via packet to SAREX @ W3IWJ. MD.USA. or SMTP Internet mail to SAREX@TOMCAT.GSFC.NASA..GOV. Astro's final target, the comet Levy, was high-risk. Ironically, each of Astro's launch attempts involved a comet: Halley's in 1986, Austin in May 1990, and Levy in September 1990. When Astro was launched in December, Levy was too close 10 the sun to permit safe observations. However, the managers decided 10 attempt observation of Levy, since, as the last target for the mission, it wouldn't matter if the sensors were overloaded. Unfortunately, while everything was working fi ne in orbit, the weather on the ground didn't cooperate. Mission controllers decided to bring Columbia back a day early to avoid the bad weather. A more important impact to the reduced length of mission was the fai lure of the Mir contact, scheduled fo r nine days into the flight. The Johnson Space Center hams responsible for SAREX were unable to complete arrangements for a quick, last second Mir oontact on the final day, even though they went as far as phoning their Moscow contacts. Columbia completed its tenth spaceflight, and the Astro mission, on December 10, 1990, at9:54:08 p.m. PST, when it landed on concrete runway 22 at Edwards AFB in California. When Astro flies again, backup payload specialist Ken Nordsieck will fly with either Ron or Sam. I asked Ron ifhe'd like to fly with SAREX again, and his reply was an enthusiastic " Sure!" III Philip Chit'n is an aerospace and technical consultant with over 350published articles in the aerospace and computer industries. He has covered the space program from the Kennedy Space Center since /983, and compurers and telecommunications since 1984. He has teen promising to get a ham tickt'lfor the past tlt'O decades, and will take the tests " an)' day now. .. Honest. Lookfora calfsign before the next SAREXflight.
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