ISS to Powys Secondary Schools, Mid Wales, UK

My recording

Echolink AMSAT audio

• A direct contact with students at Powys Secondary Schools, Mid Wales, UK is scheduled for Sat 2016-03-0510:55:19 UTC 59 deg.The scheduled astronaut is Timothy Peake, KG5BVI.

         ​Please join us in listening to the contact:         - Audio from this contact will be fed into EchoLink *AMSAT* (101377) and IRLP Node 9010 Discovery Reflector
         - Streaming audio will be available at: https://sites.google.com/site/arissaudio/         - Watch the contact live at:  https://principia.ariss.org/Live/ 
Audio on Echolink and web stream is generally transmitted around 20 minutes prior to the contact taking place so that you can hear some of the preparation that occurs. IRLP will begin just prior to the ground station call to the ISS. Please note that on Echolink there are automatic breaks of 1.5 seconds in the audio transmission. These occur every 2.5 minutes during the event. Breaks on IRLP are manual and occur approximately after every third question.

​Powys Combined Schools represent all secondary schools across the county of Powys in Wales. With students from over 90 primary schools and 12 secondary schools, we represent students from the age of 4 up to 18. As Powys Combined Schools, we have a pool of some 7,700 students aged 11-18 and a similar number of 4-11 year olds in the primary schools.

​Our goal is be to leverage our existing relationships with the primaries in each secondary catchment area to organise a county wide event over the months leading up to the ARISS contact. During which time workshops, projects and activities aimed around STEM subjects would be run.

Powys covers the historic counties of Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire, most of Brecknockshire (Breconshire), and a small part of Denbighshire — an area of 5,179 km² or 2,000 sq miles, making it the largest county in Wales by land area. Most of Powys is mountainous, with north-south transport being difficult.

The majority of the Powys population lives in villages and small towns. The largest towns are Newtown, Ystradgynlais, Brecon, and Welshpool. Powys has the lowest population density of all the principal areas of Wales.

Just under a third of the residents have Welsh linguistic skills: Welsh speakers are concentrated mainly in the rural areas both in and around Machynlleth, Llanfyllin and Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant (where William Morgan first translated the whole Bible into Welsh in 1588) in Montgomeryshire (Welsh: Sir Drefaldwyn), and the industrial area of Ystradgynlais in the extreme south-west of Brecknockshire (Welsh: Sir Frycheiniog).

Weather Satellites NOAA 15, 18 and 19

I used the software called wxtoimg (free) http://www.wxtoimg.com/



I hooked up my ft8900 via a usb sound card dongle. I used the free version of HRD to track the satellites. The results prove that there is something up there sending weather pictures, just that my reception was not so great.

I am told I need wider bandwidth to get clearer pictures, so when the funcube dongle arrives I will try again and publish the results.






The above is the best picture I could get, results varied over the days and different passes.
WXTOIMG software, you need to update the keplars, and when you put it into auto record mode it will tell you the time and the frequency of the next pass.

MX0MXO portable in Laleham Part

Back to Laleham park tonight.
Additional equipment : we now have a stove and kettle, essential on these winter evening out!

ISS contact with Norwich Schools, Norwich/East Anglia, UK,

Here is my recording
Here is the full contact as played on ECHOLINK AMSAT



A direct contact via GB2CNS with students at Norwich Schools, Norwich/East Anglia, UK, was successful Fri 2016-02-26 14:43:39 UTC 29  deg. Astronaut Timothy Peake, KG5BVI answered 16 questions before his responses were lost in the noise. With HamTV in operation, Peake responded to a request  for a wave and demonstrated weightlessness answering questions while floating on his side.

Watch a local media report about the event:  http://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2016-02-26/science-lesson-for-norfolk-pupils-that-is-out-of-this-world/

​This contact is a collaborative project between three schools in Norfolk and their local university, UEA. Norwich School employs an Ogden Trust Teaching Fellow whose job is 50% dedicated to Physics outreach and she has led the project. City of Norwich School (CNS) are hosting the link up. Reepham High School have an observatory on site and are hosting a "spot the station" event. 36 schools have signed up to be a part of all we have planned and have each received an age-appropriate radio kit for use in lessons and clubs funded by RCUK through the UEA.

Oasis Academy Brightstowe, Bristol, UK

My recording

• A direct contact via GB1OAB with students at Oasis Academy Brightstowe, Bristol, UK is scheduled for  Fri 2016-02-19 14:23:23 UTC 78 deg. The scheduled astronaut is Timothy Peake KG5BVI.

You can watch the contact at https://principia.ariss.org/Live/. Their stream starts about an hour or so prior to contact.
Audio from this contact will be fed to:EchoLink *AMSAT* (101377) and the IRLP Node 9010 Discovery Reflector. Streaming audio will be available at: https://sites.google.com/site/arissaudio/
Audio on Echolink and web stream is generally transmitted around 20 minutes prior to the contact taking place so that you can hear some of the preparation that occurs. IRLP will begin just prior to the ground station call to the ISS. Audio for this contact is a relay from the Principia website and is dependent on their stream.

• A direct contact via K4UAH with students at University of Alabama, Huntsville Space Hardware Club, Huntsville, Alabama, USA is scheduled for Fri 2016-02-19 17:20:14 UTC 72 deg.The scheduled astronaut is Tim Kopra, KE5UDN.

The Space Hardware Club at the University of Alabama in Huntsville is an engineering club of students that builds balloon payloads, satellites and rockets outside of their regular classes. The club has been working on this contact for over a year. After deciding to focus on 8th grade students, we reached out to Discovery Middle School, Westlawn Middle School, and the Tennessee Valley Homeschool 4-H group – all from the northern Alabama area. The students from Westlawn have been part of Project Lead The Way for 2 years now and have been exposed to robotics, modeling, and 3d printing. The students from the homeschool group all have a passion for STEM, a love of learning and being challenged, and are bubbling with excitement for this opportunity of a lifetime. There are two STEM II classes from Discovery Middle School that routinely rise to the expectations of their accelerated STEM focused curriculum. By the time of the contact, the students will have learned about the ISS, the astronauts and some of the experiments aboard, and amateur radio.  All of the students and club members involved are passionate about this opportunity, and thank you for your time.
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