Amateur Radio Packet via the International Space Station (ISS)

I’ve been meaning to try out packet radio via the ISS packet digipeater for a while. My first attempt the pass was less that 50degrees and I didn’t hear anything during the pass. Tonight there was a 76degree elevation pass – for this try I had my Icom 880 set to 145.825MHz, connected via a Rigblaster to a laptop running AGW Packet Engine. My antenna is just a homegrown 1/4wave vertical in my attic.

All set and ready to go, I started to hear some activity just before the peak elevation. I tried sending my unproto packet, but found out the hard way that AGWTerminal only does connected mode, and won’t send unproto packets. Found a discussion here as well, so I guess this is a limitation of AGWTerminal.

Apparently UISS is the app of choice for working packet via the ISS, but there wasn’t enough time to download it and get it installed in time for this pass.

I did receive some packets though, so although I didn’t get a chance to transmit, here’s what I received on this pass:

1:Fm K6PKL To CQ Via RS0ISS* <UI pid=F0 Len=42 >[21:58:00]
 =3748.51N/12112.44W-Solar Power K6PKL.com
 
 1:Fm K6PKL To CQ Via RS0ISS* <UI pid=F0 Len=24 >[21:58:19]
 >142032zUI-View32 V2.03
 
 1:Fm K7LWV-6 To APRS Via RS0ISS* <UI pid=F0 Len=47 >[21:58:52]
 =4454.96N/12319.98W`Dallas, OR Via ISS {UISS53}