NCRC commissioned the design of a new logo to represent the club going forward. The design was inspired by an original drawing from Willy, W1LY, showing the iconic Newport Bridge and a yagi, and it retains some elements of the original logo (the circular shape and text surround). Paul, N1PSX, has been working with the designer for several weeks, and seeking advice of Board members. The final product is shown below. Plus you can see a new website “header” shown at the top of the page.
The ARISS and NASA organizations have just announced that the All Saints Academy contact with the International Space Station will take place on Friday May 6th.
Both Thursday and Friday will be busy days for the NCRC members working at the event, with equipment tests and walkthroughs the day before, and getting things ready prior to the event start just before noon.
Our orbit will be a descending one, beginning at approximately 12:44 PM local time and continuing until approximately 12:54 PM. It will rise above the horizon to our northwest, pass to our southwest, then set to our southeast, reaching a maximum elevation of 56 degrees.
ARISS Orbit for All Saints Academy Contact Friday May 6: 12:44 to 12:54 PM Local Time
The NCRC RF Team will be able to practice on an earlier orbit from 11:07 to 11:17 AM local time, so we will know that our gear is good to go before the main event.
NCRC RF Team members should report to ASA at 9:00 AM Friday May 6.
Guests will start arriving at 11 AM, and all guests must be seated prior to 11:56 AM when the official event begins. The long call to N1ASA “NA1SS this is All Saints Academy, N1ASA, do you copy?” will begin at 12:43 and continue until contact is established. From that point, RI students will ask as many questions as possible during the 8-10 minute window of communication.
Our Astronaut will be Jeff Williams. Colonel Williams has many ties to Rhode Island. He is a 1996 Graduate of the US Naval College, and received an Honorary Doctorate from Johnson & Wales University in 2007. During this mission aboard the ISS, Expedition 47, Jeff is expected to break the cumulative days in space record currently held by Astronaut Scott Kelly.
Astronaut Jeff Williams, International Space Station Expedition 47
The NCRC Intrepid DX Crew (thank you Willy) have been busy working needed DX stations. As of today, W1SYE has 98 confirmed countries in Logbook of the World. Only 2 remain before we obtain DXCC.
A list of the missing countries sorted by prefix can be found by clicking here
The RF Crew met at ASA today from about 10 AM until 2 PM for another on-air practice session using the ISS Packet Robot. Executive summary: things went very well for both passes — still some gremlins, but nothing that wasn’t overcome before either pass.
The computer used for Doppler and Packet was still suffering from being introduced to the Rotor Controller this past Thursday, which necessitated a reinstall of the software to stop the obscure german error messages. But that gave us a great opportunity to practice manual Doppler correction (preprogrammed channels in the IC-9100) which worked fine for the first pass. The install was completed between the two passes, and things worked great on the 2nd pass.
The Rotor Control laptop was back and working fine. It’s always a test of faith to wait for the clicking of relays and changing displays that doesn’t happen until until the ISS is about 5 degrees above the horizon. I would suggest moving the array by manual control to be pointing in the right general direction. The TLE file was about 10 days old (pre-boost) and that caused it to start tracking about 5 minute early. We corrected that for the second pass. Updating TLEs and verifying PC clocks is on the checklist for the event day.
We tried the antenna polarity switch during the second pass — it did not appear to make any difference with either the RX levels or the SWR on transmit. We will measure current next saturday to be sure that the relay is actually being energized.
The egg beater was installed after drying it out and sealing things up. The SWR was 1:1 at 144 MHz, rising slowly to 1.2:1 at 146 MHz. During the last 3 minutes of the second pass we tried it on air. The reality is it will not be very effective — we could hear the ISS Packet Robot faintly in the background (not at all without the preamp on). And it was obvious that the packet robot was not hearing us at all. Of course the ISS was only about 10 degrees above the eastern horizon and sinking fast.
Some of the packets from ASA that were reported on the global APRS network were:
12:51:48 EDT: N1ASA>CQ,RS0ISS*,FN41IM,ASA,qAR,N0AGI-1:hello wb3fkp
12:53:47 EDT: N1ASA>CQ,RS0ISS*,FN41IM,ASA,qAR,VA3ROM:>fn41IM -/
12:53:57 EDT: N1ASA>CQ,RS0ISS*,FN41IM,ASA,qAR,VA3ROM:Hello N2RRJ
12:54:18 EDT: N1ASA>CQ,RS0ISS*,FN41IM,ASA,qAR,VA3ROM:Hello
from all saints academy in rhode island
Several NCRC members (Mike, K1NPT, Paul, N1PSX, Bob, WB4SON, and member applicant Charles, K1ECU) met at ASA for our second day of on-air RF testing. We wanted to get the backup antenna working, but found it slightly worse off that this past weekend, with water dripping out of the matching unit. Repair work will be undertaken ASAP. (We actually have a backup to the backup and it is working fine.)
Configuring a backup computer and attempting to run everything off that single machine proved to be both time consuming and error prone. By the time things were mostly working, the first ISS pass was almost over — too late for RF testing. The second pass 90 minutes later was better, but the Icom IC-9100 was balky due to the USB connection being handled by a hub, rather than directly by the PC.
Another RF Practice Session is planned for 10 AM this coming Saturday, Apr 23, through about 2 PM. We will be back to a multiple PC setup, so things will work much better.
Invited guests and students will receive a “goodie bag” that will include an informational Trifold Brochure on NCRC, among other things. You can see the Trifold here. It will be available at various club activities throughout this year.
While we still don’t know the final contact date, it will likely be between May 3rd to May 6th shortly after noon.