National Scanning Report

Liste~ing to

America's Spacemen

By Norm Schrein

7

· January/February 1994

Astronaut Lt. Col. John H. Glenn, Jr., the first American to orbit the Earth

r

0 n February 28, 1962, as he was strapped into

the Friendship Seven spacecraft aboard an Atlas rocket, Lieu­tenant Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr. was preparing to take the ride of his life. If it had not been for the two-way radio communications between his capsule and ground stations, it may well have been th~ last rid~ of bis life.

Early in the three orbit mission, this space pioneer experienced technical problems that ground personnel had to work out with him. The only way this could be accomplished was through the VHF radio air-to-ground radio communications system.

"We had two problems, that if it had not been fot radio, could have made for a real bad day", Senator Glenn said in a recent in­terview. "We were to practice flying the spac·ecraft manually rather than on . automatic pilot. This was supposed be a gradual process, but as things worked out, the automatic system sprang a leak and it was necessary for me to manually control the ship", the Senator said.

The problem had to be dis­cussed with Mission Control and the decision was made to let Glenn fly the craft manually

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Jay Apt, mission specialist, runs one of

the many Shuttle amateur radio

experiments (SAR EX). Shown here, Apt is on

the flight deck of the Earth-orbiting

Endeavour

rather than loose all functions from the auto pilot and possibly have no control. Another time involved a problem just before re-entry.

11 Mission control had a false reading that the heat shield on Friendship Seven was loose. "This could be a real problem, because if it was loose, there would be no protection on re-entry and I would bum up in the process," Senator Glen said. The decision was made by Mission Control to leave the retro rockets on the spaceship rather than ejecting them as planned. Unfortunately, because of LOS (Loss of Signal) in the re-entry process Glenn did not know of the plan to keep the rockets at­tached.

11 I got quite a light show up there", he said. "There was a strap that came loose from the rockets and it banged against the capsule. I thought the noise was the loss of the rockets as planned. I did not know that Mission Control decided to keep the rock­ets in place. Soon I saw a lot of sparks and fire and for a moment I thought I was burning up on re-entry. It was the retro rockets burning up", the Senator reported.

If it were ·not for radio com­munications with the ground not only telemetry but voice as well,

Senator Glenn may not have lived to re-tell his story. Fortunately for him, he was able to commuru­cate on critical issues and save the mission. He also earned a place in history when he became the first American to orbit the earth.

A Modem Day Spaceman Today, over thirty years later,

astronauts are still being fired into space. However, they have more living room than John Glenn. A modem day astronaut is Jay Apt. Dr. Apt has been a crew member on two space shuttle missions. On the STS-37 mission, which launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 5, 1991 he operated an amateur radio station making hundreds of contac~ using a borrowed handheld radio. The mission also involved the deployment of the Gamma Ray Observatory. Apt and a crew­mate, Jerry Ross performed an unscheduled space walk during which they manually deployed the observatory's large radio antenna

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January/February 1994

when remotely controlled motors failed to do so. The crew also conducted research on biolog­ically important molecules, and took over 4,000 photographs of the earth.

Astronaut Apt was Endeavor's flight engineer on the STS-47 Spacelab-!. ~~ eight day co-operative m1SS1on between the United States and Japan was launched on Ser,tember 12, 1992 to perform hfe science and ~aterials processing experiments m space. Dr. Apt was responsible for operating the Orbiter during one of the two shifts on this dual shift mission. After completing 126 orbits of the earth, the crew landed Endeavor at Kennedy Space Center.

Dr. Apt is not short on ex­perience. "I've been working in the Mission Control Center for three years before becoming an astronaut", Dr. Apt said recently.

Now you can listen to the astronauts and the folks at Mis­sion Control. In fact you can tis-

Nat[onal Scanning Report

ten to these communications with the most basic scanner. Do not try to listen to the air to ground frequencies, however. According to Ja}', "There are two reasons why 1t is difficult to pick up the shuttle communications directly. The first is most of the time we have· our UHF (communications systems) off. The second is that the "S Band" signal which is at 2.2 Ghz is in a digital form." So, if you can't listen to the shuttle directly, how can you hear the air to ground radio communications? The answer is to listen to selected amateur radio repeater stations.

Amateur radio operators have several means of re-transmitting (with FCC and NASA approval) the air to ground communications during shuttle missions. The most common way is to pull the radio communications directly off the satellite. Dr. Apt says, "There is a NASA leased transponder on a commercial satellite on which NASA puts a television and audio feed. It is very ·easy for anyone with a satellite dish to pick up that feed and use it for their own pur­pose or to put it on a repeater with a special license from NASA".

Since amateur radio repeaters

can be easily heard on the most basic scanner, it is a simple mat­ter · to tune into the com­munications between Capcom (the mission control center) which is always manned by an astronaut and the space shuttle.

Even in today's technology, there is a possibility for a com­munications failure. These fail­ures are far less common than in John Glenn's day, but they do occur from time to time. Dr. Apt said that in John Glenn's time, "There was only a fifteen minute period out of every ninety minutes where the. astronaut was in direct communications with Mission Control. That was be­cause we relied upon ground sta­tions at remote locations around the world and a. low orbiting satellite could only keep in con­tact with a ground station for a maximum of eight minutes. . At the moment we have two satellites up in stationary orbit, one above Brazil and one above the western Pacific, that cover virtually the entire globe. Now there is only about fifteen minutes when the shuttle is not in communication. "

Also the problem of loss of sig­nal during re-entry is no longer a factor. Jay says, "We don't have

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January/February 1994

Flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center's mission control

that problem anymore because we can talk to the satellites. The dead spot was due to the buildup of red hot gasses from the atmosphere on the underside of the shuttle. When you tj to talk through that to the ground, you can't get through. However, if you are using an antenna that is looking up at a satellite the dead spot is no longer a problem".

One person you can always hear on space shuttle missions, other than the astronauts is the Capcom. Jay has worked as Capcom for six shuttle missions. According to Jay, "The way the Capcom job came into existance is that everyone felt an astronaut ought to be the interface between the crew on the spacecraft and the engineering team on the ground because they don't always speak the same language. The Capcom has to be an interperter. He or

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she has to be able to speak both the engineering language of the operations team and the opera­tions language of the crew on board and keep in the front of their mind what the crew is doing at any one time. So if engineering asks for a particular job to be done and the crew is in the mid­dle of something else he might say to the man in charge, who is the flight director, 'Is it possible we can delay this to another time?' If the director says, 'No it has to be done now.' then he would say to the crew that it has to be done now: It's a way of bringing the two teams a little closer together. · It is bringing the experience of flight to the en'.'" gineering teams on the ground".

Although radio communications between the Shuttle and the ground are certainly state of the art, glitches can still occur. Dr. Apt recalls that, "On our second flight, we had a total failure of a ground communications system. At the time we were about ten minutes away from a scheduled ham radio contact with station VK6IU in Australia. The astronauts were totally out of communications with any ground stations. "We were not worried, but we were interested in. finding out what the failure was. When we came up to talk with the scheduled contact we knew they would be patching into Mission Control Center" . The astronauts simply relayed their messages via ham radio back to Mission Control and Mission Control con­tacted the shuttle crew through the Australian ham radio op­erator. The astronauts learned of a failure at a ground station in New Mexico and also learned that they would be back "on line" within a half hour.

You can get in on all the action

with your scanner. All you need to do is find an amateur repeater system near you that is carrying the space Shuttle radio com­munications.

Bill White is the operator of the WB4LAI amateur radio repeater system that covers the Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus, Ohio areas. Using a Drake ESR 324 satellite converter and a satellite dish, the members of the Kettering Medical Center Amateur Radio Club can listen to shuttle missions that are being beamed to earth from Satcom F2R (Vertical). The audio trans­missions are simply fed over the repeater system during mission operations. Although the trans­missions ire designed to be of benefit to the amateur radio com­munity, anyone with a scanner can tune them in. In the Southwest Ohio areit, folks simp­ly need to tune into 145.110 or 224.160 MHz and they will hear the audio as clear as anyone in Mission Control.

Amateur Repeaters across the country carry the Space Shuttle missions in much the same man­ner. It is just a simple matter to search the bands between 144.000--148.000 MHz (2 m), 223.000--225.000 (1 1A m) or 440.000--450.000 MHz (70 cm).

Not all repeaters carry the NASA commlll}.ications exclu­sively. You may also hear radio communications between local hams. Try searching the above mentioned bands or use a repeater from the list with this article. Remember, many amateur repeaters run high power and an­tennas and can be heard for great distances. If there is not a repeater listed for your town, try the closest location to you. You may still be able to get in on the action of America's Spacemen.

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January/February 1994

AMATEUR REPEATERS CARRYING NASA COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE SPACE SHUTTLE.

AL Blrmlngham-145.150, 145.380 AL Huntsville-147.100, 173.025• AR Russellville-439.250 AZ. Phoenix-421.250 449.000 CA Los Angeles-145.320, 145.460,

146.670, 445.400, 445.425, 446.575, 447.000, 447.025, 447.400, 447.475, 448.375, 448.500. 1241.250, 52.640 224.940

CA Monterey Bay-145.585, 443.300 CA Northern-145.530 CA Sacramento-147.195 CA San Diego-449.450. 12n.250 CA San FranciSco-427.250 444.ns CA San Joaquin Valley 52.220 CA Santa Barbara-12n.ooo FL Cape Canaveral-146.940 FL Daytona Beach-147.150 FL Gamesville-146.900 FL Jacksonvilie-147.120 FL Lakeland-147.375 FL Orlando-147.150 FL Saint Petersburg-444. 725 FL Tampa-146.760 147.380 FL Vero Beach-145.130 GA Ashburn-147.285 GA Atlanta-146.655, 147.345,

427.250 GA Forsyth-147.915 IA Cedar Rapids-146.400, 444.300 IL Chicago-145.210 IL Roiling Meadows-145.350 IN lndianapolis-426.250 MD Goddard-147.450 ME Portland-146.925 ME York-224.840 MN Central-149.200 MN Twin Cities Area-145.150,

147.120 MN Waseca-147.450 427.250 MO Kansas City-145.430 426.250 MO Saint Louis-442.000 NJ Central Area-443.400 NY Albany-146.820 NY Long lsland-448.425 OH Columbus-145.110 OH Dayton-145.110 224.160 OH Greenville-146.790 OK Tulsa-144.340, 146.940

421.250 PA Pittsburgh-145.470 SD Watertown-145.550 1X Dallas/Ft. Worth-146.600,

145.310, 448.750 1X Houston-146.640 WI Wausau-146.820, 147.060

421.250 *NASA Huntsville