N0MIR SPEAKS TO U6MIR & U7MIR
Dave Horsfall
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
da...@esi.COM.AU ...munnari!esi.COM.AU!dave