On March 17, at 11:45am students at Cleveland Heights HS along with students from Wiley Middle School, Noble Elementary School and Gesu Catholic School talked with astronaut Bill McArthur, of the Expedition 12 crew, on the International Space Station via amateur radio.  This was possible through the . ARISS - Amateur Radio on ISS - program .   Several hams and members of the NASA Glenn Amateur Radio Club:

• Nancy, KC4IYD
• Phil, KC8SRG
• Al, KB8MZT
• Mike, N8PJD
• Glenn, AF8C
• Tom, N8EFO
• May, N8MZJ

were responsible in helping the students make this successful contact or providing assistance in the auditorium.  In addition, Glenn Lindamood, a NASA employee, presented a 25 minute program on Living and Working in Space to a group of 100 high students before the contact was made. These students viewed the contact from the auditorium via a video linkup that was set up between the classroom where the contact was taking place and the auditorium. One of the teachers commented that "you could've heard a pin drop when the contact began" as all the students were very much focused on the contact taking place and being shown on the screen.

There was a total of 25 questions that was planned to be asked by 14 students. About 22 of the 25 questions were asked and each student was able to ask at least one of their question to astronaut Bill McArthur during the 10 minute pass before we lost contact.  Teacher Al DeGennaro was interviewed by WTAM 1100 AM radio about this activity earlier that morning. Also, the Cleveland Heights Sun newspaper was there as was members of the board of education..

For this contact, we also had Echolink up and running. Statistics of the echolink connection are that we had 30 known connections total from 9 countries. We had uncounted listeners on 7 simplex nodes, 4 repeater nodes and 3 additional servers.

Thanks to Dieter KX4Y for helping us with the echolink connections and special thanks to Charlie AJ9N, the ARISS mentor who helped the NGARC make this 2nd ISS contact also a success.

Background:
This activity was initiated by Glenn Amateur Radio club member Phil Jenkins and Cleveland Hts HS math teacher and NASA faculty Al DeGennaro. They completed the ARISS paperwork in  2002 and the NGARC had said we would provide any help the school needed. Around Oct. 2005, we were told that a contact with ISS would take place with Expedition 12. Since that time, several members of the ham club have been working with the school in updating their application form, gathering equipment, visiting the schools to find the optimum place to put up the antennas and radio equipment and explaining what would happen to the staff and teachers during the event.

The students came up with a list of questions and the teachers narrowed down the list of questions. In the end, everyone was happy we made a successful contact.  Photos of the event are available at
http://resources.chuh.org/CHHS/Library/Podcasts/Kidpics/index.htm

Return to NA8SA home page.