Just a quick post to describe some success I've had with a simple APRS Sgate configuration. Call sign N8QH-10.

I've been running an APRS satellite gateway (Sgate) gating APRS RF traffic to the Internet from Sunnyvale, California (about 30 miles east of the Pacific coast). The farthest station I've gated thus far is N0AN-6 near Des Moines, Iowa; a distance of 1,515 miles, or about half way across the North American continent. Here is the packet:

20100704071159 : N0AN-6]APRS,RS0ISS-4*,qAR,N8QH-10:=4205.48N/09400.76WS73' Via Sat {UISS52}

My setup is a simple classic Marconi 19.25 inch vertical antenna feeding an Advanced Receiver Research model SP144VDG 24 dB pre-amplifier, a Kenwood TM-71 transceiver, AGWPE software TNC, and UI-View on a Windows XP platform.

The Russian-American crew living aboard the International Space Station welcomed the safe arrival of a cargo-delivery tug Sunday, two days after the freighter aborted its initial rendezvous and sailed by the orbiting complex.

Flying smoothly on autopilot 350 km above Earth, the Progress M-06M spacecraft linked up to the aft docking port of the station's Zvezda service module at 12:17 p.m. EDT/16:17 GMT.

"Docking confirmed...at the four-corner border of Russia, Kazakhstan, China and Mongolia," NASA commentator Rob Navias announced from Houston's Mission Control Center. "The belated arrival of the Progress 38 cargo ship executed perfectly, flawlessly by the KURS automated rendezvous system."

The ISS Progress 38 cargo resupply ship successfully docked to the aft end of the International Space Station's Zvezda service module at 12:17 p.m. EDT Sunday. The docking was executed flawlessly by Progress' Kurs automated rendezvous system.

The Progress spacecraft carries 1,918 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen, 220 pounds of water and 2,667 pounds of experiment equipment, spare parts and other supplies to the station. It launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on June 30. An attempted docking Friday, July 2, was aborted when telemetry between the Progress and the space station was lost about 25 minutes before its planned docking.