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…
We installed a 75m loop for SSB operation on our tower when we built it. The loop is full size and is diamond shaped so that our lower SteppIR DB36 yagi can rotate inside of it. The loop is fed at the bottom corner about 20 ft up from the ground. It works great for SSB operation on 75m but we have often wished we could use it across the entire 80m band. This goal led to a project to create a matching system for the antenna. The idea was to use a set of loading coils in series at the feed point create a good match in all segments of the 80m band…
We shared this project at our project night meeting in January. I recently published an article explaining the design and construction of an 80m Broadband Matching System. The ideas used can be applied to many other matching system arrangements for many different types of low-band antennas.
We’ve made about 250 contacts with our Portable Satellite Station 2.0 and we have worked 106 grids which should be enough to earn a Satellite VUCC. We are working on a set of upgrades to create our Portable Satellite Station 3.0 which will support ISS Crew Contacts and be a 90th percentile satellite ground station. You can read more about our 3.0 upgrade plans via the link below.
