Ham Radio Beginner S Guide
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I not long back contacted Astronaut Douglas Wheelock on board the International Space Station with a simple ham radio attached to a little magnet mounted antenna inside our home in Appleton, WI. While a ham radio license is required, it is not difficult to obtain. Ham radio clubs in your area may support you obtain one. Contact the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) or visit ARRL.org to obtain more information. The radio instrumentation required is not overly costly in my opinion. While I made my contact with a radio in the $750 price range, a simple 2 meter ham radio in the $200 price range would be just fine as well. The antenna I used was a magnet mount antenna attached by way of magnet mount to our 4 drawer office file cabinet. The antenna is in the $50 price range. If you do not have a file cabinet any big metal object would in all probability work as well. Many persons use kitchen cookie sheets. A stove would work and a wood stove would be excellent. My firstborn contact with him was on 10/11/2010. Was it worth the effort… well… YEAH!!! • My 2 meter ham radio used 50 watts but you may do the occupation with a HT (hand-held radio) and 5 watts. People have applied hand-held ham radios and as little as 5 watts. If you go the portable radio route then a satellite antenna (a hand-held beam antenna) is suggested. • One thing that is required is the capacity to transmit on one frequency and listen on another. Sound like basic repeater functionality? Yeah – but the distance among the receive and transmit frequencies is much dandier than on popular repeaters. Read further for details on frequencies. No tones are necessitated for the International Space Station (ISS). Tones are required for other novice radio satellites. • Very helpful in my estimation is the capacity to track, or predict, when the International Space Station (ISS) will fly over, what direction it will come from and go to, and what height (angle) it will be in the sky. There is no one best method. Your choice will depend on your budget, resources, etc.. I had a PC and internet connection and I downloaded the FREE “Ham Radio Deluxe” program that includes a satellite tracking program. Get your Ham Radio Deluxe software FREE and get to recognise it. I employed the software to alert you, even thru digital voice, when to make your attempt. There are web-based number of things from which only one can be chosen – do a Google search for “satellite predictions” and “satellite tracking” for some more alternatives. • Know the rectify frequencies. Visit AMSAT,org to find the data on respective satellites and how to work them. For specifics on the International Space Station (ISS) go to their section. Specifically, read everything from this section http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/ariss/#freqs through the bottom of the page. • Set-up your radio. Ham radio repeaters use particular silent tones in a heap of instances. This allows multiple repeaters to use the same frequency without interposing with each other. The ham radio operator transmits a silent tone on the specific frequency to signal which repeater s/he wants to operate with. The International Space Station (ISS) uses no tone. Learn to say your call sign in proper, standard phonetics. Remember that you are talking to trained professionals. They will NOT be grateful for and may not even understand any “cutesy” individualized phonetics. Also learn to transmit your CITY speedily after your call sign. The city will help others recognise that the astronaut wants YOU to tell them the rest of your call sign in case they miss percentage of it. • Lastly, do have a great deal of patience. They may be busy. You may be busy. Remember that ham radio on the International Space Station is in general done in their spare time. Good luck busting your firstborn space pile-up! specifically |
