QST de W1AW
Space Bulletin 009 ARLS009
From ARRL Headquarters
Newington, CT December 16, 2005
To all radio amateurs
SB SPACE ARL ARLS009
ARLS009 ISS commander shooting for WAC, WAS and maybe DXCC from
space
ISS Expedition 12 Commander Bill McArthur, KC5ACR, has proven to be
one of the more active Amateur Radio on the International Space
Station (ARISS) operators among ham radio operators who have
occupied the space station. In fact, McArthur’s having so much fun
operating from space that he’s hoping to complete Worked All
Continents (WAC), Worked All States (WAS) and maybe even DXCC from
space.
“Bill McArthur continues to be active on voice and now has a couple
of personal goals he is trying to achieve,” says ARISS Ham Radio
Project Engineer Kenneth Ransom, N5VHO. “He is trying to talk to
someone in every state in the United States. According to his log,
he has managed to work 37 states so far.” In addition, Ransom says,
McArthur wants to work as many countries as he can.
“He’s off to a good start with 28 DXCC entities in his log as of
December 12,” he said. “These contacts have been with amateur
stations on every continent with the exception of Antarctica.” That
contact could happen this weekend, however. Although the IARU does
not require WAC applicants to have worked Antarctica, Ransom says
that ARISS tradition calls for an Antarctica QSO to achieve WAC from
space “since the astronauts seem to have an unfair advantage.”
Expedition 9 astronaut Mike Fincke, KE5AIT, became the first ISS
crew member to contact all seven of the world’s continents via
Amateur Radio from NA1SS.
States on McArthur’s most-needed list are Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho,
Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Pennsylvania,
Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.
“The list of DXCC entities is just starting to grow, so he needs a
lot right now,” Ransom conceded this week, adding that he hasn’t
included ARISS school group contacts in his counts and hopes
McArthur will achieve his goals without them. “We won’t know the
official results for months after the mission,” he added.
McArthur is about halfway through his approximately six-month duty
tour aboard the ISS. He and crewmate Valery Tokarev will return to
Earth in April.
During Thanksgiving week, McArthur reportedly made some three dozen
casual contacts, most of them over North America and a few over
Europe and New Zealand. He made contacts with stations in the US on
December 6. He also had QSOs with Australia, New Zealand and the US
on December 11.
The NA1SS worldwide voice and packet downlink frequency is 145.800
MHz. In Regions 2 and 3 (the Americas, and the Pacific), the voice
uplink is 144.49 MHz. In Region 1 (Europe, Central Asia and Africa),
the voice uplink is 145.20 MHz. The worldwide packet uplink is
145.99 MHz. All frequencies are subject to Doppler shift. The
Science@NASA Web site provides location information for the ISS
at, http://science.nasa.gov/temp/StationLoc.html.
The Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program
is an international educational outreach with US participation by
ARRL, AMSAT and NASA. Information can be found at,
http://www.rac.ca/ariss.
With all of the attention on NA1SS contacts and SuitSat-1, I have not been paying too much attention to the space shuttle program. Let’s face it, after the second round of stuff falling off the external fuel tank thereby grounding the shuttle, it is easy to lose enthusiasm for the program. When will it become operational? Well, NASA says it is aiming for “Return to Flight” with the launch of Discovery STS-121 as early as May 2006.
