Fifth-grader contacts outer space
By Christina Cooke Staff Writer

Dustin Davis, a fifth-grader at Stone Creek Elementary School, thought about researching blind fish for his school science project. He also considered building a bottle rocket propelled by lemon juice.
But he finally settled on trying to contact outer space, and to his own surprise, he succeeded.
As the International Space Station passed over Rossville on Feb. 11, the 10-year-old and his father, Steve, contacted the astronauts on board with an amateur radio and a homemade antenna.
The project won first place at the Stone Creek Elementary Science Fair and will compete in the Walker Science Fair on Monday and Tuesday.

Recently, we had the wonderful happening of "Suitsat" that spurred the interest of many young minds. The frequency of 145.990 is in the OSCAR sub band (145.800-146.000) as indicated by the ARRL in their well publicized band plan. Many interlopers find their way into this clear portion of 2 meters unknowingly using these sub bands causing headaches to those that were straining to hear this event. Even using nearby frequencies can cause problems when the super ears are listening for the birds. Also, 145.800 the ISS downlink, is in this same sub band and is being used in many metro areas for chit-chat and other experiments. We must remind each other that the band plan was put in place to assist us in utilizing the spectrum effectively. Those that just hear nothing and start a QSO should be reminded about how wide their signal is and that they are causing many well intentioned hams trying to make contact with the satellites unintentional interference. There may not be a satellite signal every minute of the day in these sub bands but when they are there, terrestrial stations are not listening with big enough ears as someone with an OSCAR caliber setup. Point these sub bands out to all at your next club meeting or get together.

I was trying for the last month to contact via APRS and Packet with ISS... Always was succesfull, even my location is in a valley between tall mountains (1100 m. over sea level).
I'm working with a vertical antenna ( 1/4 wavelength with ground plane). My rig: TS 711 with 20 Watts Output.
I'm very glad to contact with APRS/Packet in every passes over North of Argentina. It's really easy.

Thanks to all...

Oscar
LU5BOJ