Another busy pass, this time with 12 stations heard and placed on the map! So, we heard and placed Scotland (MM0XXP), England (G4ILO 2E0JXE G6HMS), Ireland (EI2GNB), The Netherlands (PD2RLD), Germany (DB3LA), France (G6EZP), Italy (IK1COA), Spain (EA1JM), Hungary (HA3HT) and Yugoslavia (YU7RD). Yugoslavia’s a new one - pretty far away as it goes (2011.06KM to be exact)… The ISS definately does it’s job for long distance communication on low power! …

This was a pretty quiet pass, with 6 stations being heard. From Left to right it reads: Callsign - Type - Mobile/Portable/Fixed - Distance - Latitude - Longitude - Number of Packets Received So, all in all we heard Germany (DG4BR DG3LA), Italy (IK3ZGB), Hungary (HA3HT), Spain (EA1JM) and England (G0GOO). Some familiar callsigns beginning to pop up. Transmission and Reception wasn’t the clearest - I’ll have to update the Keplarian Elements (see the bottom for more) by the looks of it. Interestingly, for me anyway, is that I can actually hear when the system isn’t going to be able to decode a packet, and there were quite a few of those moments, so I think that means I’ll need to look at the Elements. Will try again tomorrow with new ones and see if the quality increases and as such, reception improves. Another thing that’s worth taking away as a valuable lesson from playing with the ISS. …

This pass was relatively noisy, with 10 stations being heard… Through the space station, I heard England (G0GOO G6UIM), the Netherlands (PD2RLD), Germany (GF8LS DG4BR DM2KGB), Spain (EA1JM), Italy (IK1COA) and France (F6CDZ F4FEB), Plotted below for your viewing pleasure. Not a bad list, overall, but I reckon we can do better. Below is a map of all the stations in Europe that were heard by the Space Station, and we are one of them (as MM3ZRZ), but there are a lot that seem to be missing from my list above. …

This was a busier pass, with 14 stations heard… From Left to right it reads: Callsign - Type - Mobile/Portable/Fixed - Distance - Latitude - Longitude - Number of Packets Received Through the International Space Station, I heard Ireland, (EI7IG), England (G0GOO G6WZA), Scotland (MM0YEQ), The Netherlands (PD2RLD), Belgium, (ON6MU), Germany (DB3LA DG1IHH), Spain (EB1BE EA1JM EA2BVD), Italy (IZ1BCJ IK1COA) and Hungary (HA3HT), plotted below for your viewing pleasure. …

Below is a basic overview of the hardware that was set up and used for my Satellite Tracking activities at University! STAC station at Strathclyde University is a student-driven experiment into low power, low cost Satellite communications for academic research purposes. The station is also closely linked with WoSARS, who have been very supportive in the initial stages of the set up. Currently the only person licensed to operate from the station is Dave, MM3ZRZ. …