WPI Wireless talks to ISS
January 25th, 2008 in News.
In an effort to promote radio and space to other WPI students and staff, Theo, KC2RMJ and I (KB1OZL) put together an event with WPI Wireless to talk to the International Space Station during a particularly good pass last November. I found the pictures of the event and thought they were nice.
I put together one of our (WPIWA’s) smaller towers for the event, and kept it outside my apartment for a few days leading up to the event. Also, I built a 2 meter J Pole antenna since it had pretty good gain at the horizon to help lengthen our window. I modified it a bit from what hams generally use (I used much larger tubing), but as I expected it made the antenna much more wideband. We got about 6 dBi, at <1.5 SWR across the band. Nice!
Unfortunatly, the ISS was speaking packet that day, and we were expecting voice. It was certainly fun to hear a space station transmitting, but it still would have been nicer to get voice.
