https://rz01.org - amateur radio, electronic tinkering, cybersecurity, retro computing, homelab building and other (mostly technical) topics

Last October, I had the honor of making such contact with the ISS. I posted about this on my website here: https://rz01.org/na1ss/

The ISS has radios on board that allow amateur radio operators to send and receive APRS messages, talk to other hams via their built-in FM repeater or to receive SSTV images. They also have amateur TV stuff on board but I have not explored this yet. Crew members with an amateur radio license can pick up the mic of the radio that acts as a FM repeater to make contacts with other hams on the earth.

You can contact the ISS via a handheld setup (FM radio and a yagi antenna in your hand) or with a stationary setup like mine: https://rz01.org/leo-sat-ground-station-v3/

> You can contact the ISS via a handheld setup (FM radio and a yagi antenna in your hand) or with a stationary setup like mine: https://rz01.org/leo-sat-ground-station-v3/

A good few years ago I had a crack as using the ISS's crossband repeater when it was on and could hear myself clearly with a Kenwood TH-F7E and home-made dual-band crossed dipole.

Unfortunately no-one else could work me, because they'd boosted the satellite's orbit, the TLEs hadn't been updated, and so everyone with a nice motorised antenna positioner was aiming at the wrong part of the sky.

Me standing in my back garden pointing roughly in the direction of the fast-moving bright spot? Nah that worked perfectly :-D

Nice! I made my first LEO sat contact also in the garden with an arrow yagi and a cheap HT. It was fun but I prefer operating the easy way and building a nice station. Some neighbours watched me making this first contact and they now speak to me differently...

I was out struggling to rig up a new antenna I'd made - nothing was going right and I was getting frustrated - when it occurred to me that if someone were to ask what I was doing, they would've seen a rambling lunatic trying to sculpt a pile of coat hangers while yelling "I'M TRYING TO REACH THE SPACE STATION!!!"

If you can pull this off, you are truly free!

If you are interested in amateur radio in general, you might enjoy reading my "Declaration of Love to Amateur Radio": https://rz01.org/a-declaration-of-love-to-amateur-radio/

The best free and mainstream option would be duckduckgo at the moment in my opinion.

I am also very happy with Kagi's search result and suspect that someone is just trolling.

Here's a similar approach for converting a trackball or mouse into a heated input device: https://rz01.org/heated-trackball/

I don't take long-term notes at all, only quick notes on paper of thing I need to do. I tried to collect all thoughts, notes etc. but I would never read them again. Most of it would be outdated anyways. So I understand that these kind of notes might feel like ballast and might be a reason to not be able to close with things.

Everything that is worth keeping is on my website as properliy written posts which I enjoy to re-read from time to time. You could also look at it this way: anything that doesn't make it onto the website - i.e. is published - isn't worth saving either.

You might be interested in the QubeDX: https://rz01.org/when-two-become-one/

Thanks for mentioning that! I have no experience with this console but a friend already recommended me looking into the Switch. Need to confirm that what you say also applies to Minecraft on the Switch and then I would do the...well...switch.

The Switch 2 is coming out in a few months.

We don’t know much of anything about that console yet and how Minecraft would work on it though.

You are welcome! I also called the help hotline when I was stuck at Simon the Sorcerer :) Good and innocent times.