Picture at left – a portion of my ham shack – the receivers – one of which used to be used to pick up an actual Sputnik satellite (upper left Radio Shack DX150B circa 1973)!
From the Canadian wire and on Global TV news today…
Four Toronto college students have accomplished a technological feat that their teachers are calling a first. The Humber College seniors made contact with the International Space Station on Monday with a radio system they designed and built themselves.
School officials say that, to their knowledge, that’s never been accomplished by students at the college level.
These school officials have;
never used an internet search engine…
have never researched an article…
and have been living under a skull crushing pile of gravel for the duration of their miserable lives…
Hello. Has anyone ever heard of Amateur Radio? Ham radio as it is also called is a hobby enjoyed by about 1 million people Worldwide.
And thousands of student radio operators, if not tens of thousands of student radio operators (at various high-school, college and University amateur radio clubs…) have enjoyed the thrill of radio contact with orbital space craft, shuttles, space stations etc.
I am one of those people. My call sign is VA7WWV.
My first radio conversation, prior to actually having my own license, was as an 11 year old conversing with a rescue mission in Managua, Nicaragua after the 1972 earthquake that killed 5,000 of the 400,000 population, leaving 20,000 injured and over 250,000 homeless.
And as for space communications… We have been doing it since Skylab, every shuttle since, the Mir space station and the current international space station.
And to the good folks at Humber College…
Do your homework!