20 Years of Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

Amateur radio achieved 20 years of continuous operations on the International Space Station in December and celebrated with a slow-scan television (SSTV) event at the end of the month. The ISS crew set up automated SSTV transmissions of 12 different images and multitudes of Earth stations received them.

I managed to copy 7 of the 12, plus the very bottom of an eighth, using my makeshift setup: an iPhone with the Black Cat SSTV app held at the speaker of my Kenwood TH-F6A handheld. I used a rooftop 7/8-wavelength 2-meter vertical for my first attempts, which gives good results except for some noise banding. My best images came with the Arrow antenna I use for all satellites.

Like many other listeners, I uploaded my image files to the ARISS SSTV Gallery, then requested a certificate of accomplishment. It arrived promptly today.

The first successful ARISS contact with a school happened December 21, 2000. Since then, astronauts have made more than 1300 school contacts all over the world.

Comments

1AQD / NU1AQD / W1AQD QSL Collection

My great uncle Louis C. Brown, "Brownie" in Maine, was active in amateur radio between 1927 and 1936. I have 250+ of his QSLs from United States stations and additional cards from DX hams. I will gladly provide digital images of individual QSLs for relatives or others who wish to have them for their research or records. Calls are listed by call area then suffix W1ABG (2), W1ACR, NU1AHY, W1AIC, W1ALO (3), W1AMG, W1AMQ, 1AOF, W1AOT, W1APR, 1AQL, W1AQW, W1ART, W1ARW, 1AUR, W1AUR, 1AVJ, NU1BBM, W1BEF, W1BEO, W1BEU, W1BFT, W1BFZ, W1BIG, W1BIR, NU1BJC, W1BNG, 1BNL, W1BOK, W1CE, W1CIB, W1CPF, W1CQL, W1CQR, W1CTF, W1IVZ, W1KL, W1LQ, W1NS, W1QH (2), W1UR, 1VE, W1VM, W1VS, W1WV, NQ2AC, W2ACD, U2AET, W2AGI, W2AHU, W2AVO, 2AVP, W2BAK, W2BDX, NU2BHB, W2BVT, W2BXA, 2PO, NU2RK, 2WI, W3ADX, NU3AEL, NU3AEL, W3AER, W3AIA, W3AWS, 3ARC, NU3ASC, NU3BNS, W3EZR, NU3QE, NU3TR, 3AWQ, NU4ACC, NU4ADL, W4AFM, NU4AFP, 4AGE, W4AII, W4AJL, NU4CS, W4CWH, 4DS, W4HC, 4HH, W4KA, W4LY, W4MF, W4NE, W4TN, W4

Realistic HTX-100

The 30th Annual Conference of the Central States VHF Society was held July 26-28, 1996 at the Thunderbird Hotel & Convention Center in Bloomington, Minnesota. Among the papers presented was Make Your HTX-100 a Flexible IF Transceiver by Rus Healy, NJ2L (now K2UA).

The Elusive Subja Seed

Why am I so captivated by the idea of drinking tasteless, slippery, crunchy-kerneled seeds? Because subja seeds sound like fun. I first learned of them by browsing The Indian Spice Kitchen , where Monisha Bharadwaj describes them, but Osimum basilicum seeds seem impossible to find. I made a special trip to Seattle's Uwajimaya to track them down, but came up empty. I stopped at Market Spice at Pike Street, where they hadn't heard of them (but they suggested another shop down the street). I went into Souk, where the gentleman understood what I was looking for only after I described it; he knew the seeds by a different name, which he couldn't remember, and said his sister gets them at a shop (the name not in his memory) on Roosevelt Avenue. But I was out of time in the city and couldn't follow up. (But before I took more than a few steps out Souk's door, the proprietor called me back in, because he had asked his arriving friend what those seeds were called. Tukmaria,

follow that qar!

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