Antennas, Featured, General, Space, Station Equipment

Upgrading 2.0 Satellite Station for an ARISS Crew Contact

We have been working with Hudson Memorial School near Nashua, NH to prepare for a possible ARISS Crew Contact. The ARISS folks work with schools and their Ham Radio helpers to prepare for these contacts. ARISS provides recommendations for ground station equipment to help ensure a good experience for the students. The ground station recommendations provide a solid set of specifications to support communications with the ISS on the 2m band. The recommendations include things such as:

  • A requirement to build both a primary and a backup ground station
  • Radio and power specifications (a 200W amp is recommended)
  • Antenna specifications including recommendations to provide for switchable LHCP and RHCP
  • Computer controlled azimuth/elevation positioning of antennas to track the ISS
  • Use of a receive preamplifier at the antenna

You can read more about our ISS Contact upgrade plans via the link below…

Source: Upgrading our 2.0 Satellite Station for ARISS Contact

Fred, AB1OC

Activities, General, On The Air

Open House for New Hams – Saturday March 17

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Are you a new Ham and interested in what you can do with your license?  Or have been licensed for a while but have not been on the air?  We will be holding a New Ham Open House at Fred, AB1OC, and Anita, AB1QB’s QTH on Saturday, March 17th starting at 1:00 pm for new Hams.

AB1OC/AB1QB Shack
AB1OC/AB1QB Shack

HF Operation

We’ll have a tour of our antenna farm and we’ll have our HF Station setup for you to make some contacts.

AB1OC Antenna Tower

Satellite Operation

Satellite 3.0 Antennas
Satellite 3.0 Antennas

We will also have our Satellite Station setup for you to make contacts.

Fox Hunt and Demos

A crew going on a foxhunt
A crew going on a foxhunt

We will also have a fox hunt (Weather Permitting)  and demos of the High Altitude Balloon and some Raspberry Pi projects.

HT Programming

New Ham Open House
Kenwood TH-D74 HT

We will also help you to program your HTs using RTSystems or Chirp software.  Bring your HT and a programming cable if you are interested in this.

Hope to see you on March 17th.  See the Calendar for details.  It starts at 1pm but will go all afternoon so you can arrive any time in the afternoon.

Antennas, Featured, General, Space, Station Equipment

Portable Satellite Station 3.0 Initial Contacts

With the construction of our portable satellite station 3.0 complete, we’ve been looking forward to an opportunity to test the new setup. We chose the Nashua Area Radio Society’s recent…

Portable Satellite Station 3.0 Antenna System
Portable Satellite Station 3.0 Antenna System

Source: A Portable Satellite Station Part 6 – 3.0 Station Initial Contacts | Our HAM Station

Our next generation portable satellite station is complete and we tested it during our recent Tech License Class. We discovered a minor issue which was easily sorted out. The new antenna system includes switchable circular polarity and has performed really performs well during the first 50 or so contacts made using the 3.0 station. You can read more about the new station and the initial tests via the link above.

Fred, AB1OC

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