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- From: dave@eram.esi.COM.AU (Dave Horsfall)
- Newsgroups: aus.radio.amsat
- Subject: N0MIR SPEAKS TO U6MIR & U7MIR
- Message-ID: <2539@eram.esi.COM.AU>
- Date: 21 Dec 92 00:26:54 GMT
- Distribution: aus
- Organization: Pacific ESI, Sydney, AUSTRALIA
- Lines: 56
-
- HR AMSAT NEWS SERVICE BULLETIN 354.02 FROM AMSAT HQ
- SILVER SPRING, MD DECEMBER 19, 1992 BID:$ANS-354.02
- TO ALL RADIO AMATEURS BT
-
- St. Louis Science Center Hosting The Soviet Space Exhibit
-
- Many MIR space station watchers will remember last year that the station W5MIR
- was specifically set up in the lobby of the Fort Worth, TX Museum of Science
- and Technology to provide public relations support for the Soviet Space
- Exhibit. Included in many of the activities surrounding W5MIR were weekly
- chats with the cosmonauts aboard MIR and the re-broadcasting of these
- conversations over the museum's public address system the so that
- the visitors to the Space Exhibit could also hear these conversations.
- Many a museum vistor was suprised to see how easy it was for radio amateurs
- to talk to the cosmonauts and how eager the cosmonauts were to talk to
- those at the museum. This year, the Soviet Space Exhibit has moved to the
- St. Louis, MO Science Center and again amateur radio is part of the Space
- Exhibit. The station call being used, most appropriately, is N0MIR and
- according to Mike Koening (N0PFF) the OSCAR station is quite impressive.
- Mike says that the station at the Science Center consists of an IC-970, the
- Hygain 218S antenna set, Kenpro AZ/EL rotators, two COMPUDYNE 386 computers
- running Roy Welch's (W0SL) ORBITS III program and Antonio Franklin's
- InstantTrack V1.0b. To help track the fast moving MIR space station, the
- Kansas City Tracker was installed in one of the COMPUDYNE computers to
- command the rotators. To help hear the cosmonauts there are SSB
- Electronics 2M and 70CM pre-amps and to ensure that N0MIR is heard, the
- station has a RF Concepts 2M/70CM power amplifier. When N0MIR is not being
- used to talk with the cosmonauts, the operators are demonstrating the many
- different modes, from the PACSATs to AO-13, with the Science Center
- visitors.
-
- Roy Welch reports that on Saturday, 21-Nov-92, ex-Apollo 10 astronaut and
- now Air Force General Tom Stafford was present at the Space Exhibit and
- through arrangements with Anatoly Solovyev (U6MIR), the Flight Commander
- of MIR, a former Apollo astronaut was able to chat with a "on-orbit" cosmonaut.
- During this pass, the local CBS and NBC television affliates were present to
- record this event. Tom Stafford spoke in Russian to Anatoly (U6MIR). On the
- next pass, a Russian translator and engineer who accompanies the Space Exhibit,
- worked Sergey Avdeyev (U7MIR), the MIR space station Flight Engineer. All of
- these QSOs were arranged through messages left on the packet radio BBS aboard
- MIR. After these MIR passes, General Stafford expressed a great interest in
- the satellite tracking software that radio amateurs are running. He also
- expressed an interested in AMSAT and in setting up an OSCAR satellite station
- at the Oklahoma City Space Museum. General Stafford is a native of Oklahoma.
-
- N0PFF wishes to remind all radio amateurs that if you work N0MIR on any of
- the OSCAR satellites, that you are eligible to receive a beautiful, special
- event station QSL card. Send your QSL cards with an enclosed s.a.s.e to
- W0SL's QTH, 908 Dutch Mill Dr., Manchester, MO 63011.
-
- [The AMSAT News Service (ANS) would like to thank Mike Koening (N0PFF) and
- Roy Welch (W0SL) for the information which went into this bulletin item.]
-
- --
- Dave Horsfall (VK2KFU) VK2KFU @ VK2RWI.NSW.AUS.OC
- dave@esi.COM.AU ...munnari!esi.COM.AU!dave
-