NASA Seeks Ham Operators' Help To Test NanoSail-D

SEWilco writes "Despite our older headline, NanoSail-D was not 'Lost in space.' It was stuck in its canister. The solar sail nano-satellite finally ejected on Wednesday. The three-day countdown to sail deployment began then, so we'll have to see what happens next." And clm1970 adds "In another conventional use for an arguably unconventional hobby given the technology of 2011, NASA is requesting the help of Amateur Radio or 'ham operators' to help listen to a beacon signal of the nano-satellite. Many say the hobby is dying, but for every 'death knell,' it seems another application brings it back to life to prove its usefulness."

Comments

Ham Radio is dying about as fast as

[jra]

Usenet.

Which, by the way, *still* isn't dead, thank-you-very-much smb and tomt.

The Eternal September, BTW, finally ended.

Re:Ham operators are VERY important

[assemblerex]

I hate to reply my own topic but the link didn't post for some reason.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqaKzIkyBug ham radio from Haiti earthquake
after the disaster.

Re:Ham operators are VERY important

[nomadic]

The infrastructure is getting more and more robust though in terms of (unintentional) redundancy. Phone lines, wireless, fiber optic, cable, satellite; not to mention military and emergency services own communications systems.

Re:Ham operators are VERY important

[Obfuscant]

I heard someone said during the San Bruno, CA, gas pipeline explosion Red Cross was looking for some amateur radio operators to help with the disaster, but couldn't find any.

Red Cross shot themselves in the foot metaphoriclly speaking a few years ago with their ham friends by pushing through a criminal background check for all volunteers, including radio ops. A LOT of ham ops don't want to have anything to do with background checks, and those that do get sucked up by the governmental agencies that do ES.

I think they've withdrawn this requirement, but even so the bad karma they generated will stay with them for a long time. I haven't kept up with the situation since the local chapter got reorganized into a multi-county group that doesn't have any offices in our county anymore. They used to be a served agency for our ARES group, but when they left the area we stopped helping them.

And you don't need to spend billions, just need to draw in citizens willing to help their fellow citizens when disaster strikes.

"Fellow citizens", without training, might be able to figure out how to deal with an FRS radio, but God please don't plonk them down on a real radio where people need to know what they are doing. It will be bad enough all the untrained hams coming out of the woodwork when the balloon goes up, people who have no clue about radio will be useless -- for radio work.

Re:Ham operators are VERY important

[Obfuscant]

all that infrastructure will become useless during a power failure, thats when HF/VHF/UHF radio all running on battery packs come in handy.

Bingo.

For example, my county and our neighbor are busy designing a trunked 700MHz system to cover all the government users within the two counties. This system will require more than a dozen repeater sites to get anything close to the coverage they need, PLUS a handful of old VHF systems to fill in a few of the important empty spots. All of this is linked through a network connection to a city 40 miles away in another county.

Cut through the fiber running next to the interstate -- POOF, all repeaters revert to standalone mode. No links. You wanna talk from the hinterlands back to the city? Good luck. Ditto if someone just accidentally pulls the plug on the controller in that distant city. (They probably do have someone who vacuums the rugs on a regular basis...)

In an earthquake, the towers fall over, or the antennas fall down. Those are on mountain tops. How fast do you think the commercial radio service people will get to all of them? OTOH, if the road is open I can drive to the top of the local mountain and repair whatever is up there myself. Or half a dozen people in this county can do it. Legally.

In a couple of years "safe haven" rules kick in. That means that all of those repeaters the two counties put up will have strict, reduced power limits and thus limited coverage. My repeaters have no such limits, and the main one on the mountain top is not even close to full power right now. I can fix one repeater and have coverage over the entire county -- unlike even the existing LMR VHF system in use.

What the OP is probably missing is that ham radio is picking up a lot of the "emergency services own communications systems" business, and a lot of government agencies are betting the retirement fund on hams being there.

Re:I know it's usually thought of as old, but...

[Pezbian]

It wouldn't be a dying hobby if people stuck with it. It seems all I met, aside from guys my own age, were the kind of seasoned veteran ham (more like outdated men using outdated technology to solve outdated problems whilst nursing among them the collective delusion that they're somehow elite) who answer you like this:

Q: "I'm looking to get into radio and I want a good dual-band handheld. What would you recommend?"
A: "HTs won't get you far. You should get a Heathkit tube-driven HF screamer you have to crank-start and take an oscilloscope to and resurrect every week. Ah, memories..."

Q: "I want to put an antenna on my roof. A good 2M omni. What would you recommend?"
A: "Can't talk to Burkina Faso on 2M. What you need is a 100ft Rohn tower in your yard and a few hundred feet of eyesore wire strung between the tower in your yard and the towers you install in two neighbors' yards. Ah, memories..."

Q: "I want a solid VHF/UHF mobile rig for my offroad truck. What would you recommend?"
A: "Military all the way... like back in the war. (flashback omitted) Get yourself a Chevy Pedovan *young Ham is heard choking, a guffaw of laughter and a gasp of shock having become lodged in his windpipe*, twenty foot vertical whip, screaming tube amp, four more alternators to power it. Ah, memories..."
Q: "Why not just a good IC-706MkII and one of those active antenna tuners and maybe a deep cycle battery like the only other 20-something guy in the club?"
A: "Damn kids don't listen! It's kids like you who got the morse code requirement taken away! It was a punkass kid filter, dammit! Is nothing sacred?!" he shrieked, swollen catheter bag swaying rhythmically--perfectly acceptable as he blends right in.

Q: "Wow! It's amazing how much power solid state amplifiers can crank out for their small size and efficiency. Less prone to earthquake damage than tubes, wouldn't you say?"
A: "Transistor heresy won't survive a nuclear blast! You're one EMP from that newfangled toy being a useless brick! Who'll be laughing then, eh? They called us fools! We will have our vindication!"
Q: "Nuclear? It's been over 60 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Cold War ended forever ago. Why make your gear revolve around something so unlikely?"
A: "Because I don't want all my work to be for nothing and want to finally shriek 'I told you so!' to the cockroaches who survive! *presses mysterious red button, sixy miles away a city is vaporized... and then the hallucination ends as the creepy ham has had yet another heart attack and the paramedics alerted via young Ham's cellphone are saving his life... again*

Traded my radio for a TV and took up video gaming. Women who are close friends synchronize their menstrual cycles. I felt my blood pressure and tin-foil-hat-ness synchronizing with those of my Ham peers after just one meeting.