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If you want reliable backup comms in the wilderness you use radio.

The reliance on phones and internet is convenient, but if you can afford those you can afford radio gear and spend some time learning how to use it.

Amateur radio operators were the original nerds long before computers existed.

http://www.rac.ca/

http://www.arrl.org/

Official Observers, experienced equipment-heavy hams with experience in signal tracing. The FCC relies on them to _gently_ monitor the airwaves in these days of modern times, when you can't tell the ACs from the DCs...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_Auxiliary

http://www.rac.ca/en/rac/public-service/official-observers/

Also note how few projects there are that are above VHF in these books even though amateur bands go to 1.3 GHz.

That's news to me since I have a ham radio for 10 and 24 GHz, and those are not even highest frequency ham bands. There are allocated ham bands up to 250 GHz, and you don't need a license to operate above 400 GHz.

But on the subject of your comment - indeed, anyone who is designing a microwave antenna without CST or Ansoft tools is asking for trouble. At best it's endless rework; at worst you can't afford to change the design 100 times. Optimizers in CST are worth their weight in latinum.

These devices cause unconscionable wideband interference with shortwave ham and broadcast reception. If someone traces it to you (not hard) and complains, you have to stop using them.

See also http://www.rac.ca/regulatory/plc.htm [http://www.rac.ca/regulatory/plc.htm]

That's exactly what this is. An amateur radio contact.

If you watch the video linked by the article, you see the person making contact identifies himself as VA3JUV

If you search amateur callsign databases for it, it actually shows up in the database.

The required setup is documented here.

You're wrong, there's a dedicated amateur radio station on the ISS. That's all it's used for. Sure there's not someone always there, but the station is always on. And you don't require any sort of permission at all to contact the ISS. Any amateur radio operator can.

Here's the FAQ about the ARISS program.

http://www.rac.ca/ariss/oindex.htm

You'll notice this question:

"CAN HAMS MAKE UNSCHEDULED ARISS CONTACTS?

        Yes. The ISS crew has not lost sight of why it has been so successful. It is the Amateur Radio community that has brought astronauts voices into schools. Crew members make random contacts with earth-bound hams. They make contacts during their breaks, pre-sleep time and before and after mealtime. Astronauts have contacted thousands of hams around the world. Computer software allows the crew to operate the 2-meter packet gear radio in unattended mode, and hams can make contacts when the crewmembers are working."

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.

Evidently most of the people who've replied on here don't have a clue about amateur radio either. A big part of amateur radio is experimentation and if it doesn't work, you figure out why and do it again. Hopefully with your adjustments, corrections and redesigns your experiment will become a working item. After all, how do you think all the neat modes in amateur radio were developed? Trial and error.

Most /.ers have no clue about working QRP (low power radio)-I mean, the thing is miles above earth transmitting on 500mW of power. Some personal stereos put out more power than that.

But, if anyone checks, there's another unused spacesuit and more equipment on the ISS. Oh, by the way, it's ARISS (Amateur Radio on the International Space Station) http://www.rac.ca/ariss that did this, not NASA.

If people RTFA and do a little more reading about the news stories http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2006/02/03/103/, they just might notice little things.

It's amazing how stupid most of these people on /. are about anything that doesn't have to do with Linux or MP3s.

> Okay, so what did they do, other than being "hams in space" and novelty contacts for average amateur radio operators?
In my post I reported that over 5 years they have had contacts iwth over 200 school groups. Follow the ARISS link I provided to find out more.

I think students talking to a live astronaut or cosmonaut in space of significant educational value, and will help interest more kids in careers in science and technology. We should applaud the ISS crewmembers who take their time to do this.

...Five years ago this week, the International Space Station Expedition 1 crew of US astronaut and Expedition 1 Commander William ''Shep'' Shepherd, KD5GSL, and Russian cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, U5MIR, became the first humans to live aboard the ISS.

The initial Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) station gear was already aboard the space station by the time the first crew launched. Later in the month, the Expedition 1 team installed and activated the VHF gear on FM voice and packet under the US call sign NA1SS and the Russian call sign RS0ISS.

Each of the 12 crews that have lived on the ISS to conduct assembly and research activities has included at least one US radio amateur. The Expedition 12 crew Commander Bill McArthur, KC5ACR, and Russian cosmonaut Valery Tokarev will remain on the ISS until next April. Over the years, crew members have conducted nearly 200 ARISS school group contacts and numerous casual QSOs.

• Sofware Defined Radio kits
• Elecraft kits
• PSK31
• APRS
• ARISS
• AMSAT

It's a bad idea and has been dropped left and right. Here's a paper from Canada on BPL. And here's a counter proposal for those who feel that energy companies need to be in the network business: Broadband Over gas (apparently not a joke).

Well, that's the beauty of ham radio. You can power one site and send messages thousands of miles away with a single tower and a car battery. To power all the cell towers, you'd need significantly more power, with significantly more towers and then you have to figure out how to send the signals off island. Plus you have to actually charge the cell phones. I don't think areas of Aceh had or are going to have electricity for a very, very long time.

A family friend is a member of ARES, a network of ham radio operators who spring into action when the power goes off and cellular is a distant memory. These guys take their (volunteer) positions pretty seriously, and have acted a few times in the past decade to get news around quickly when more conventional methods aren't working.

Also, this is the Andaman and Nicobar islands. Some of these islands are being protected by India because they have stone age cultures untouched by modern culture. I would think electricity is pretty sparse, let alone cell phones.

So yes, Ham radio, Wow. Think of them as the Amish of 21th century communications. When the power grid collapses, they're the ones who will be there to save your ass.

Many of these islands haven't been contacted yet, even one week later. This is an excellent scenario for Ham Radio use. Let's hope that along with new seismic bouys they can dot the Indian Ocean with emergency Ham Radio systems.

It has been trialled enough times around the world with no critical mass of market share that like the video-telephone it will not successfull ever.

A large scale roll out will more likely than not generate unacceptable (according to existing law, of unlicensed and in this case unintended radiators) intereference with various licensed spectrum users including government, military, and amateur voice and data communications.

Specifically, it was used to de-spin the satellite from almost 18 RPM down to the desired 5 RPM.

Some more relevant quotes I found while looking around on the web about AO-40's system:

From http://www.amsat-dl.org/journal/adlj40ge.htm

Magnetorquer In the satellite, several electro-magnets, also named magnetorquer, are distributes that can be used in the interplay with the Earth's magnetic field close to perigee for the attitude-control of the satellite. The satellite acts as the rotor of an electric motor while the magnet-field of the Earth forms the stator. The process of this movement is named as magnetorquing. With the magnetorquing, the flight-attitude of the satellite and the spin-speed can be changed during perigee-passes.

From http://www.rac.ca/spacenws.htm:

The onboard magnetorquing system--which consists of solenoid coils--makes use of Earth's magnetic field to control the spacecraft's spin and orientation. Magnetorquing is most effective when Earth's magnetic field is strongest, so it typically only takes place at perigee--when the satellite is closest to the Earth. Ground controllers have been making incremental adjustments during each perigee.

I also remember someone saying that this was somewhat "experimental" on AO-40. I can't find a quote though...

I agree fully that it's good to see the NASA engineers thinking "Well it's broke, we can't send someone up to fix it, so what can we do to make it work?" What I would like to know is who came up with the original idea (pre AO-40, or this satellite). It sure doesn't seem like the type of thing which I would have thought about when trying to figure out how to control the attitude of a spacecraft.

Hams should be prime sources of information for practical aspects antenna placement and more. There should be at least one amateur radio op in your area.

Although you did not say anything about where this school district is, you did make reference to Dollars Canadian so I will point you to Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC) as a good starting point to locating a ham in your area.

Additionally, the ARRL in the USA and qrz.com would be other good starting points for information searches.

While what you are looking to accomplish is utterly forbidden to do within the amateur radio bands, the techniques used in those bands would be adaptable to other, more suitable frequencies.

Best of luck!

Regards, NN5KS

The ARRL has more info on licensing for /.'s in the US. AMSAT has more info on ALL the ham satellites.

With the partial exception of the Russian RS-13, you don't need to know Morse Code to get a license to use any of them. And remember, reception is still free.

The ARRL has more info on licensing for /.'s in the US. AMSAT has more info on ALL the ham satellites.

With the partial exception of the Russian RS-13, you don't need to know Morse Code to get a license to use any of them. And remember, reception is still free.

The two primary resources I'd recommend looking into are:

- Embedded Computing
- ARRL
- RAC

...those are just some starting points. Embedded computing applications have the hardware designed for rugged environments, and amateur radio is a handy technical resource for do-it-yourself electronics. Remote relay stations are the norm, not to mention other extremes.

Search engines are your friends, particularly Google.

de VE3SLG