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We Have Contact

Contact was made with the International Space Station. More details soon!

… And what a contact it was! Initial impressions from KS1G:

Everyone did a fabulous job delivering a quality radio and audio and visual experience and dealing with the last-minute (and TOO last minute!) crisis, including having to reboot the entire video streaming system just before contact, and my own fighting SatPC32 for the longest 2 minutes 54 seconds of my life to get the antennas pointing correctly. (I know what happened, why, and how to NOT LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN (he hopes)).

Once underway, the contact went quite smoothly. The school (thank you Sandy and Amy) did a great job shepherding the students to the microphone and cuing them to ask their questions. And there were some EXCELLENT questions. WE received great feedback from the school about the audio and video quality, particularly how clearly everyone could hear Astronaut Dr. Drew Morgan. Thirteen students were able to ask and get their questions answered; unfortunately we could not make up for the lost time upfront (ISS doesn’t have “park” on the gearshift) so we lost contact around the end of that answer. The students and staff (and all of us) gave out a loud cheer and congratulations all around. We followed the contact with a short Q&A by myself and John, N0JSD before the assembly concluded.

Afterwards, there were interviews by media; I know Loudoun Now, LCPS Public Affairs, and NBC4-TV were present. Brice Hilliard (who deservers huge credit for instigating this idea in the 1st place) and N0JSD were interviewed by NBC4, and LCPS PA chatted with me as well. After a quick pizza lunch in the library, it was time to pack up and depart. Loudoun Ashburn Fire Station arrived again with the tower truck and made quick work of getting our larger items off the roof. N0JSD got an added bonus – a ride in the tower to it’s maximum height! (that’s TWO “bucket list” items in ONE DAY, maybe 3 if NBC4 airs the video).

Social media was ablaze, I know there were several posts on Twitter from the school and the associated elementary schools. And a great behind the scenes shot (WA4TXE did a masterful job of directing the cats and managing backstage so everything went sufficiently smooth out front!)

I’d like to personally thank everyone for the help today. This was a team effort and it took a lot of people over many days to make it a success, including making a clean and safe departure this afternoon. So besides Jeff K0ZR, Paulson KG4TIH, Dave WA4TXE, John N0JSD, and me KS1G, our helpers for contact day included:

Kevin AK2M, Denny KF4TJI, Paul N4PD, John W0MPM, Kurt KI4FWB, Paulson’s colleagues Gary Walker, Dave Denison, Michael Parker, Cory McHale, Martin NV3H, Bruce KN4TS, and WA4TXE YL Cheri.

(Again, if I left anyone off or messed up a name or callsign, please tell me or Paulson and we’ll make the corrections)

So after all that, who wants to help another school talk to an astronaut on the ISS? I DO! (ARISS is taking applications for the 2nd half of 2020 through November, the window for 1st half 2021 is in May….)

Paulson is working on final edits of the contact and full program videos and photos, and we plan to have another post and a full report for the November LARG meeting. We will also get video from the school. If you have photos, please provide to Paulson (an upload folder link was emailed to the ariss list earlier this evening)

73s de KS1G

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ARISS Final Set-Up

Today was a busy day finalizing the video production, re-checking audio levels, and practice, practice, practice with the full radio & production crew and FSMS faculty. A big thank you to everyone who helped today, including LARG members WA4TXE, KG4TIH, K0ZR, N0JSD, and N4PD (my apologies if I missed anyone) and Paulson’s friends Dave, Gary, and Parker.

We made a QSO via AO-91, and monitored a successful school contact with a ground station in Maryland using the primary and backup stations. My home SATNOGS station captured much of the transmission from the ISS. You can listen to it here. (Use the audio tab. The full contact was closer to 11 minutes; the audio becomes decent about 90 seconds in. I’m sure other SATNOGS stations did as well or better.)

Tomorrow (Tuesday 10/29) is CONTACT DAY! The main crew will be arriving at the school ~7:00 AM. If you are planning on helping (we can use a few more ham-hands and friends of hams backstage) please arrive at Farmwell Station MS by 9:00 AM and check in at the office to get your visitor badge. The program starts around 10:00. CONTACT TIME is currently 11:00:41 (may change a little by tomorrow morning). Contact will finish about 11:11, and students will be dismissed before 11:30.

Live Stream:  https://live.myvrspot.com/player?udi=bG91ZG91bg==&c=ZmFybWlzcw==  starting about 10:25AM for the pre-contact program. [The program may be several seconds up to 30 seconds delayed from live radio.]
Listen from home:  145.8 MHZ, FM.  An HT (orient sideways to the ISS location) can receive much of the pass.  You may need squelch off.  More info at ariss.org, amsat.org. https://www.heavens-above.com/main.aspx and https://www.n2yo.com/?s=25544&live=1

RF QUIET REQUEST:  If on school grounds, please, avoid transmitting on 2M, particularly anywhere near 145.80 MHz, during the contact period to not impair our reception of the ISS.  We are using UHF simplex for local coordination.  

We will need help with tear-down. If you can help with tear-down, please try to arrive about noon. (Later arrivals welcome!) If you cannot arrive until later, we can probably still use your help to remove the equipment and get it back to the KS1G or KG4TIH QTHs. In particular, a pickup that can handle the antenna base (a 6x6x1 angle iron frame, can be stacked on-edge) is needed.

I’d like to thank again everyone for their assistance. This has been a big effort, and we getting a huge amount of publicity for LARG and amateur radio!

73s, de KS1G

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LARG Wednesday Night 6-Meter Net

We meet every Wednesday evening from 8:00 PM to 8:30 PM on 6 meters SSB: on or about 50.130 MHz. Tonight’s net was short with only W2YE and W5ODJ checking in to test our gear. Both of us had been doing antenna repair and found things working just fine. Signals were the strongest I’ve heard on the band in a while.

73,

John
W5ODJ

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ARISS Station – Antenna Setup

After yesterday’s very soggy delivery of all the gear to the school, today began setup. The Ashburn Fire Station had to respond to a call, so their tower truck was delayed. To make progress, a bunch of us relayed all the items that would fit through the hatch and carried them to the antenna site above the auditorium. We pulled the antenna base (oof!) and 2M antenna with rope. The the tower truck arrived and made quick work of getting the ballast for the antenna base (several hundred pounds of concrete blocks) onto the roof. THANK YOU ASHBURN STATION FD.

Ashburn Fire Station Engine “Tower 6” made short work of getting the heavy items to the roof!

We quickly assembled the antenna, mast, base, and supporting electronics and cables and just managed to get everything together before sundown. The results are very satisfying:

L-R: KN4QPI, KS1G, and KF4TJI. Photo by Nancy H.

Thursday, we complete set-up and be ready for rehearsal with the faculty and students that afternoon after school.

THANK YOU to everyone who helped with set-up today!

73 de KS1G

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ARISS Scheduling Update

The ARISS contact for LARG and LCPS has been scheduled for Tuesday at 1101 EST.

If you’re able to help with any of these periods please contact Steve KS1G or Paulson KG4TIH ASAP.

DateStartEndDescription
2019-10-221530TBDTransport equipment
2019-10-231530TBDSetup – Wiring & Radio
Must end before 2000
2019-10-2409001530Setup – A/V
2019-10-2415301700Dress Rehearsal
2019-10-28TBD1130Final preparations
2019-10-281151Monitor contact with other school
2019-10-290700TBDFinal setup and preparations
2019-10-29TBDProgram Start
2019-10-291101Contact!
2019-10-291111Estimated LOS
2019-10-291200TBDTear down and pack up

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LARG 80 / 40M Digital Watering Hole.

I called the net tonight starting at 8:30pm local time. W0MPM joined me and we had a nice chat on Olivia 800/5 tonight.

We meet every Sunday evening from 19:30 to 20:00 local time. During winter (Standard Time: Nov-Mar) 3.58275 MHz. and in summer (Daylight Savings Time: Mar-Nov) 7.07325 MHz.

The default mode for this net is Olivia 500/8. If the preferred frequency is in use we will call the net on the nearest clear spectrum available. If you don’t see us on the normal frequency look up or down a little.

When I am net control I listen on both local repeaters (146.7R and 145.31R). If you are having any difficulty call us on the repeater and we’ll do our best to help you get on the air for the net.

Everyone is welcome to join us and we hope to see you on the digital net.

73!

de W5ODJ/John

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ARISS Scheduling Update

An urgent EVA to repair a broken power module on the ISS was performed on 2019-10-18. This work has caused the ARISS schedule to be moved back and is currently in flux. At this time the LARG ARISS team doesn’t know when the new window will be. Although based on orbital predictions it should be in the morning between 9a and 12p.

Setup is still targeted for the week of 2019-10-21.

Date StartEndDescription
2019-10-223:30pBefore 9pMove Hardware To School
2019-10-233:30pBefore 9pMove Antenna To Roof
&
Setup
2019-10-24TBD3:30pAny Pre-Rehearsal Setup
2019-10-243:30p5pDress Rehearsal
TBDTBDTBDISS Contact Day

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Members Only Area Update

The k4lrg.org members only area now has two new folders

As of now the https://k4lrg.org/memberpublic/ directory does NOT have directory indexes enabled. You will get a “Forbidden” error if you go there without the full path to a file. For instance https://k4lrg.org/memberpublic/ and https://k4lrg.org/memberpublic/directory will fail but https://k4lrg.org/memberpublic/README.txt

Why? To make access to these resources quickly and easily available to all members.

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Thursday SSB Net Report Oct 17 2019

80m – 3675 KHz on 18 OCT 2019 Open 0000Z
Listening 3813 KHz for General class ops to check-in
QNI:
W0MPM John
W5ODJ John
KE4S Dave, net control
We discussed our current progress on antenna projects, software upgrades, and vagaries of telecom company provisioning and billing. We closed at 0032Z.

Please join us next week or any Thursday at 8:00PM.
73 de Dave KE4S

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SteppIR back in commission.

About 4 weeks ago I had an error on my SteppIR controller indicating that something was wrong managing the tape(s) in the element housings of my SteppIR antenna. After some troubleshooting on the ground looking up I decided it was time to take the tower down for some maintenance to see what was the matter.

Tower #2 down for maintenance.

It takes me about 10 minutes to get my tower and antenna on the ground where I can work on it. There are two electric worm drives that allow me to put it on the ground as indicated above. I didn’t get to work on it the night I brought it down but did go out there the next day to see what I could find.

In the past it’s been wiring that caused controller errors (of my own making). There are 16 wires that run the 4 step motors that control the elements. When I bought the antenna many years ago it was one of the first models they offered. They really hadn’t had the years of experience required to work outcome of the kinks that show up with years of operation of a product like this. Because of this, some of the cables, connectors and methods used were really not up for being outdoors for years in all kinds of weather, temperatures and sunshine.

Having said that, I’ve not had much trouble with the antenna in spite of all of it’s moving parts. The only other time I had an issue was when a plastic cog broke inside the motor housing (EHU) on the driven element.

Ironically, that’s how tower #2 was born. The driven element when the antenna was located on tower #1 required the use of a crane to repair. After struggling with the decision on how to manage this antenna into my future I decided it needed to be on a different structure; one that I could manage for years to come. That decision has really paid off allowing me to properly maintain this antenna over time. Much more planning, working with the county, permits, designing, drawings, etc. I built tower #2 that you see here.

Back to my problem. After some troubleshooting I figured out what was wrong. With all the elements supposed to be in the retracted position one of the tubes had something in it rattling. What could that be?

  • Broken copper tape.
  • Copper tape broken inside tube.

One of the tapes was broken. The other was bent. After further troubleshooting I realized that the rewinding mechanism the tapes use failed on one of the tapes causing excess tape to be unreeled inside the EHU housing. It appeared the step motor bent the tapes essentially destroying them both.

I had to leave for business then vacation but before I left I ordered replacement tapes from SteppIR along with some other small things like gaskets that I could replace once I got into my project. They shipped the stuff to me when I was out of town. It was waiting for me upon my arrival home.

While I was gone I decided that I was going to do what I’ve been wanting to do for some time and that was to rewire all the EHUs with better control cable without any breaks all the way to the base of the tower where it is interfaced with a controller. That work took a few days. I had to pull off every motor, take down all of the old cable, rewire the motors and put everything back in place.

  • Rewire of old EHU.
  • New Cable Glands.
  • Old EHU (reflector)
  • New EHU connector.
  • Newer EHU (driven)

To rewire the motors I bought 500 feet of 4-wire control cable from DX Engineering. I would end up using all but about 50 feet of that. Once you run the cable up the tower and out to the motors it’s about 80-ish feet of cable.

All of that cable comes into a new enclosure I decided to also build. The enclosure is from Home Depot, the cable glands from EBay. The device on the inside is one of the original SteppIR doo-dads used to eliminate line noise and provide a path to ground (voltage suppressor). I’ve never like that it was outside cabled with inside-grade cable. So I put the whole shooting match on the inside of an enclosure out of reach of the sun and weather.

Re-terminated all 16 wires to each of the 4 step motors. Hopefully this new wiring will eliminate any outdoor mess that tends to follow these cables (corrosion and the like).

After wiring everything back up I brought the controller out to do a test run. Much to my surprise, I got the wiring correct on the first run and everything tested out perfectly. Sweet!

Since the tower was down I took the opportunity to grease all the trust bearings (there are 3 of them), cold galvanize any minor rust I could find, use Fluid Film on fittings that tend to rust and then waxed the skids on the tower sections.

I used the worm drives to bring the tower back to it’s upright position, fastened all of the bolts back in place and finished dressing the cable down to the base of the tower while lifting the tower into it’s fullest up position.

Tower #2 in foreground back in operation. Tower #1 in background. Dipole for 160, 80 and 40 meters on poles.

I cleaned and dressed the chain for the primary motor and tested the up and down movement of the tower to be perfect. I was back in action!

The antenna is really amazing to operate. I’m glad to have this project done before things get really cold. I’ll be using this antenna a lot this winter. After the repairs I’ve been able to make contacts all over the world in all different modes.

I did the work all myself. The parts from SteppIR were $110 and the cable from DX was $166. I bought this antenna on January 23, 2008, almost 12 years ago. Many people tell me that the maintenance of this antenna is too much to bear and keeps them from owning one. I beg to differ.

What a wonderful piece of kit this antenna has been. I’ve enjoyed every bit about it. From the original purchase, construction and lifting on to my first tower and then on to its final place on tower #2 it has been a joy to use.

A proper skyline from my QTH.

I hope to see you on the air soon.

73!

John
W5ODJ

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