AMSAT-UK

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Tim Peake Sandringham School Contact

Posted: 30 Dec 2015 05:23 AM PST
http://amsat-uk.org/2015/12/30/tim-p...ingham-school/

Sandringham School pupils with Foundation certificates Credit Verulam ARC

The first Amateur Radio school contact by UK astronaut Tim Peake GB1SS from
the International Space Station (ISS) will take place on Friday, January 8,
2016 at 0847 GMT with students at Sandringham School, St. Albans in
Hertfordshire. The school will use the call sign GB1SAN.

The St. Albans based Verulam Amateur Radio Club (VARC) ran an Amateur Radio
Foundation Licence course in December. Three of the candidates were pupils
from Sandringham School who took the course in preparation for the contact
with Tim Peake.

ARISS UK will provide and set up all necessary radio equipment (for
example, low earth orbit satellite tracking antennas and radios) to
establishing a fully functional, direct radio link with the International
Space Station from the school premises. In a ten-minute window when the ISS
will be over the UK, an amateur radio contact will be established with Tim,
and students will be able to ask him questions about his life and work on
board the ISS.

Tim will operating from the Columbus module and his downlink will be
audible on 145.800MHz.Â* This signal should be receivable across most of the
British Isles and Europe.

The contact will also be webcast live via the ARISS Principia Webstream and
the blog at the UK Operations team for ARISS will be updated with details
of when the web stream will start early next week.
Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) logo

What equipment do you need to hear the ISS?

Almost any 144 MHz FM transceiver will receive the ISS; you can even use a
general coverage VHF scanner with an external antenna. As far as the
antenna is concerned the simpler the better. A ¼ wave ground plane can give
good results because it has a high angle of radiation. Large 2m colinears
don’t work quite as well because the radiation pattern is concentrated at
the horizon.

You can receive the ISS using a 144 MHz hand-held outdoors with its helical
antenna but a 1/4 wave whip will give far better results.

In the UK we use narrow 2.5 kHz deviation FM but the ISS transmits on
145.800 MHz with the wider 5 kHz deviation used in much of the world. Most
rigs can be switched been wide and narrow deviation FM filters so select
the wider filter. Hand-held rigs all seem to have a single wide filter
fitted as standard.

The International Space Station is traveling around the Earth at over
28,000 km/h. This high speed makes radio signals appear to shift in
frequency, a phenomenon called Doppler Shift. When the ISS is approaching
your location the signal may be 3.5 kHz higher in frequency on 145.8035
MHz. During the 10 minute pass the frequency will gradually move lower
reaching 145.7965 MHz as the ISS goes out of range. To get maximum signal
you ideally need a radio that tunes in 1 kHz or smaller steps to follow the
shift but in practice acceptable results are obtained with the radio left
on 145.800 MHz.
Tim Peake KG5BVI training on the amateur radio station equipment he will
use on the ISS

ISS Amateur Radio Stations

There are two amateur radio stations available to astronauts on the ISS.

The Russian Service Module has a dual-band Kenwood TM-D710 transceiver
(this replaced the older TM-D700). Four antennas are available, three of
which are identical and each can support both transmit and receive
operations on 2m, 70cm, L band and S band. They also support reception for
the Russian Glisser TV system, which is used during spacewalks. The fourth
antenna is a 2.5 m long vertical whip that can be used to support High
Frequency (HF) operations although at the present time there is no amateur
HF equipment.

The ESA Columbus Module has two Ericsson M-PA series FM 5 watt handheld
radios, one for 145, and the other for 435 MHz, as well as the 2.4 GHz
HamTV Digital Amateur Television Transmitter. Antennas are available for
145 and 435 MHz for the Ericsson handhelds; additionally, there are 1260
and 2400 MHz antennas for the HamTV system.

Tim Peake will the using the equipment in the ESA Columbus Module.

The ISS HamTV system will probably not be available for the Sandringham
School contact so there will be no live pictures of Tim as he takes part in
the contact.Â* However, the HamTV system should be transmitting albeit with
a blank picture.

Youll be able to listen online to Tim Peake GB1SS on the 145.800 MHz FM
downlink by using the SUWS WebSDR radio at http://websdr.suws.org.uk/

Tim Peake ISS School Contacts Announced

http://amsat-uk.org/2015/12/15/tim-p...cts-announced/

Sandringham School http://www.sandringham.herts.sch.uk/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SandringhamSch1

Verulam Amateur Radio Club http://www.verulam-arc.org.uk/

What is Amateur Radio? http://www.essexham.co.uk/what-is-amateur-radio

Find an amateur radio training course near you
https://thersgb.org/services/coursefinder/

ARISS http://www.ariss-eu.org/