Okay, okay, I know I’m crap at doing these blog-type things, but I guess this is just becoming a bin for things I’ve done that I find interesting. And on that note… I’m working on what I’d call an exiting new project – it’s a new website that I’m working on that’s somewhat taking up all my time… I’ll reveal the address at a later date. It’s proved interesting so far – the biggest problems I’ve had are file permissions and relearning bash… Meaning that I’ve had to learn quite a lot about the Linux file permission way of working, and get my C based head around bash! …

This pass started off quiet but got busier towards the end, as the ISS passed over the more Eastern European countries. The APRS software, AGWTracker, had some difficulty as not all station include their Latitude and Longitude data in the packets I was hearing. Also, updating the Keps was a good plan - everything was much clearer, even after our tracking software (currently Nova for Windows) said the ISS was out of range! …

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. …