Fellow hams, Mr. Charlie (KG5QNO) has asked me to reach out to the ham community in support of St. Stephen's Episcopal School - Houston's ARISS contact with the ISS this year. (This is the school that my kids attend.)
(More info here: https://www.ssesh.org/iss/) Specifically, we are looking/asking for loaner (or donated) equipment. We have an "equipment plan" due to ARISS in a couple of weeks, in which we will outline our plans for 2 stations. One will be a primary station, which we will use to talk to an astronaut aboard the ISS as it flies over (if all goes well), and the second will be a backup station. The primary station will need to have a 2m cross-yagi antenna with az and el rotators so that it can automagically track the ISS as it flies overhead. The backup station will need a 2m vertical or eggbeater antenna. Here's the skippy on what we need to put together: https://www.ariss.org/uploads/1/9/6/8/19681527/ariss_ground_station.pdf The transceivers need to be 50-100W, and need to be able to tune down to the single kHz, which may be used to adjust for the Doppler effect. We'll need masts and tripods, etc., as well coax, grounding wire and all the other bits and bobs that go into a well-designed station. Please reach out and let me know if you have equipment that you'd be willing to loan or donate. I'll work with Charlie to flesh out the plan. We're going to beg, borrow, and steal what we can, and maybe have a fundraiser to allow us to buy what we can't. Some of you have asked about date, time, and frequency. This is likely to happen in the fall. Once our equipment plan is approved, we should get a better idea of when it'll happen. We won't know the *exact* date and time until the Tuesday before the pass, and I will certainly pass along that information when we get it. I suspect there'll be a public livestream of the event as well, so you may be able to tune in and watch over the Internets as well as listening to the astronaut side of the conversation on your radio. Downlink will be the normal ISS ham radio downlink, which is 145.800. Thanks for your interest and your help! Jeff Greer, W5JEF
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