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It's their blog.

That's the problem. All the articles i've seen either say or imply they built it from scratch. "Home-Built" radio etc.

1 bad article, and everybody else who wrote one poached it for (bad) info.

Why ?!? It seems to me that at least one of the guys involved has a regular ham radio license What is disappoining is the smugness demonstrated by some slashdotters about what the canadian guys actually did. If you read the story and their blog, they had to understand how the whole thing works, to built antennas, to learn how to track the bird and to operate. It isn't rocket science, but it is not easy to do. After all, this can be the beginning of a career, just like it happened to me about twenty years ago, when through ham radio I got involved into science and signal processing. I am now a senior scientist for a Fortune100 company, but I am no more involved into ham radio: just a few years after my graduation I stared smelling into ham radio this kind of smugness that appears in some of the answers to this story, and I quitted. I had nothing more to learn, and people I met through the hobby were too proud of themselves to be interested in learning something new from me. Maybe the fault is not with young people, isn't it ?!?

Lots of people buy transceivers.

Lots of people buy rotors and controllers.

At least they claim to have built the antenna...

Sure, it'd be cooler if they etched their own circuit boards, mined and refined their own copper wires, and then grew their own silicon for the final amplifier transistors (or at least built their own vacuum tubes), but it looks like these are a few people with no experience who said "We wanna talk to space", and then did it.

I agree that by the standards of the radio amateur community, this is "no big deal", but by comparison to their peers who are sitting around and playing with their Wii's, this is a pretty good step forward.

Being able to build an antenna is a relevant, practical skill in the radio world. They're exposed to the weather, they break, they need repair (or replacement) from time to time.

http://www.operationfirstcontact.com/blog/episode16.htm

Today, Mr. Rector, Paul, and I went out to Radioworld and purchased a transceiver. After much research, we decided to go with the ICOM Ic-V8000. For the cost, it has exactly what we need. On Friday, we're going to be integrating it into our setup, and doing all the necessary testing.

The story is pretty hyped up but good on them anyway.

If anyone is interested, you can read their blog which details their project.

http://www.operationfirstcontact.com/blog.htm

Sadly the Globe and Mail got the story very wrong. They didn't even build the equipment, they bought much of it off the shelf.

As you can see in this entry they bought a common commercially made 2m mobile transceiver.

http://www.operationfirstcontact.com/blog/episode16.htm

"Today, Mr. Rector, Paul, and I went out to Radioworld and purchased a transceiver. After much research, we decided to go with the ICOM Ic-V8000. For the cost, it has exactly what we need. On Friday, we're going to be integrating it into our setup, and doing all the necessary testing."

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? OK, so these guys BOUGHT a radio OFF THE SHELF and then made contact through a scheduled program for the ISS to contact schools? Scheduled contact

The ARISS program is a program to schedule the ISS to make contact with your school via amateur radio. Roughly half a dozen schools are contacted every week in this manner. This is even more non-news than it seemed before. The fact that this is college students trying to claim this is a major project for graduation is absurd. Sounds like they did too much partying and needed to come up with something quick.

If anyone is interested, you can read their blog which details their project.

http://www.operationfirstcontact.com/blog.htm

Sadly the Globe and Mail got the story very wrong. They didn't even build the equipment, they bought much of it off the shelf.

As you can see in this entry they bought a common commercially made 2m mobile transceiver.

http://www.operationfirstcontact.com/blog/episode16.htm

"Today, Mr. Rector, Paul, and I went out to Radioworld and purchased a transceiver. After much research, we decided to go with the ICOM Ic-V8000. For the cost, it has exactly what we need. On Friday, we're going to be integrating it into our setup, and doing all the necessary testing."

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? OK, so these guys BOUGHT a radio OFF THE SHELF and then made contact through a scheduled program for the ISS to contact schools? Scheduled contact

The ARISS program is a program to schedule the ISS to make contact with your school via amateur radio. Roughly half a dozen schools are contacted every week in this manner. This is even more non-news than it seemed before. The fact that this is college students trying to claim this is a major project for graduation is absurd. Sounds like they did too much partying and needed to come up with something quick.

They didn't just build a kit.

No, they perpetrated a worse blasphemy than building a kit - according to their website, they purchased a friggin' tranceiver!

Many, many hams have the brains and skill to actually DESIGN AND BUILD something as opposed to following cookbook designs and solder pre-supplied parts down and call it a miracle. If their website is correct, they did neither wrt the radio.

These kids did not build their own radio. The bought an Icom Ic-V8000 radio and a Yaesu G-5500 rotator and built their own antenna. One of the kids got a ham license and they were able to get some time with the IIS.

http://www.operationfirstcontact.com/blog/episode16.htm

The only thing they did was build an antenna basically. I'm happy for them (we could use more kids getting into Ham radio) but this story is sensationalizes on something that many people have done before.

Yeah, but that reporter had never heard of it before (and obviously can't be bothered to do any research that might spoil their headline.)

If anyone is interested, you can read their blog which details their project.

http://www.operationfirstcontact.com/blog.htm

Sadly the Globe and Mail got the story very wrong. They didn't even build the equipment, they bought much of it off the shelf.

As you can see in this entry they bought a common commercially made 2m mobile transceiver.

http://www.operationfirstcontact.com/blog/episode16.htm

"Today, Mr. Rector, Paul, and I went out to Radioworld and purchased a transceiver. After much research, we decided to go with the ICOM Ic-V8000. For the cost, it has exactly what we need. On Friday, we're going to be integrating it into our setup, and doing all the necessary testing."

If anyone is interested, you can read their blog which details their project.

http://www.operationfirstcontact.com/blog.htm

Sadly the Globe and Mail got the story very wrong. They didn't even build the equipment, they bought much of it off the shelf.

As you can see in this entry they bought a common commercially made 2m mobile transceiver.

http://www.operationfirstcontact.com/blog/episode16.htm

"Today, Mr. Rector, Paul, and I went out to Radioworld and purchased a transceiver. After much research, we decided to go with the ICOM Ic-V8000. For the cost, it has exactly what we need. On Friday, we're going to be integrating it into our setup, and doing all the necessary testing."

Well, add to that the fact that they didn't even build their own radio. Here's their website:

http://www.operationfirstcontact.com/blog/episode16.htm

They bought an ICOM Ic-V8000 as the transceiver. Basically all they did was build an antenna.

These kids did not build their own radio. The bought an Icom Ic-V8000 radio and a Yaesu G-5500 rotator and built their own antenna. One of the kids got a ham license and they were able to get some time with the IIS.

http://www.operationfirstcontact.com/blog/episode16.htm

The only thing they did was build an antenna basically. I'm happy for them (we could use more kids getting into Ham radio) but this story is sensationalizes on something that many people have done before.