Members of the Dixie Amateur Radio Club sucessfully prepared a ham radio station at the Southern Utah Boy Scout Centennial Celebration that took place on Saturday,  September 18, 2010.  This event took place at the Washington County Fairgrounds in Hurricane, Utah.  This ham radio station was set up as part of the ARISS program (see link below).

Club member Frank Eldredge, W7GGR, was the driving force behind submitting an application to ARISS to schecule a special pre-arranged contact with an Astronaut aboard the ISS.  Club members Gary Zabriskie, N7ARE and Steve Peterson, KI7L, handled the technical end of providing the equipment and antennas. Many other Dixie Amateur Radio Club members participated both in the evening before setting up and coordinating the activities on Saturday. (Note: if you participated or attended, please e-mail the Webmaster w7drc@arrl.net so you can be properly acknowledged).

A special thanks to Tom Smith, K7AHD, who provided his communications trailer and HF station. While not a large number of contacts were made with the special callsign N7B, quite a large number of Boy Scouts stopped in to see what HF operating was all about.  Gary Zabriskie, N7ARE, initiated one particular conact with a ham in Fairbanks, Alaska on the 20 meter ham band who spent over 20 minutes speaking with two local scouts who asked him a wide range of questions.  Many thanks to Joe, KL7LF, for doing that.  For one of the two scouts, this was his first exposure to ham radio and he left thinking it is cool.   That scout also now knows that even when it is 60 below zero in late January, and you only get 4 hours of daylight, you still have to get up, go to school and parents have to go to work.  And car tires aren't necessary round for the first several miles while waiting for the frozen bottom side to "warm up".

At the event two completely independent VHF ground stations were assembled. The primary station consisted of a Yaesu FT857D, a gasfet preamp and a cross-element circular polarized yagi antenna. The backup rig was a Kenwood D700 into a collinear vertical and an M2 EB144 Eggbeater antenna (circular polarized ominidirectional antenna). 

The contact was arranged with ARISS to enable a number of specially selected youth to ask questions directly of an astronaut orbiting the Earth on the International Space Station (ISS).    

The ISS came into range of the VHF ground station at approximately 11:11 AM and passed out of range at about 11:20 AM.  During this short pass 15 scouts spoke over the microphone on Amateur Radio VHF band frequencies to mission specialist Doug Wheelock, callsign KF5BOC, who was operating under the station callsign NA1SS on the ISS. 

The lucky scouts each stated their name and asked a short question of  Doug,  who in real-time and direct from the ISS, answered their questions, in most cases acknowledging their name.

As Amateur Radio is a “hobby” activity of Astronauts and Cosmonauts on the ISS, this contact was subject to the crew member’s availability.  We had anticipated that this contact would be successful and it was!    Thanks again to all of you who helped out!

Click HERE  to view a Windows Media Video of a news story of the contact as shot by local TV station KCSG. (very large file  size: 9.95MB)

Click HERE  to view a home video of the contact shot by Ric Wayman, K7DLX as presented on YouTube.

Click HERE  to view some intitial photos of the event. More to follow soon and will be of better quality and will be formatted better.

Click HERE for an article on KCSG-TV's website about the scheduled contact that highlights club member Jaden S. Taylor, KE7ZPD.

ST. GEORGE -- Hal Whiting of St. George was driving in the Arizona desert between the Grand Canyon and the Utah border, looking for an old plane wreckage with his two sons and some friends when they were flagged down by a group of people.   The group said a woman was injured by an ATV rollover and asked for a satellite phone. Whiting didn't have one but, lucky for them, he's an amateur ham radio operator.

Whiting set up his equipment and made an emergency call. "This is K-I-2-U. Break, break, break. I have emergency traffic," he announced into his radio.  Ralph Magee, over 50 miles away, responded to his call.   "He replied back, and I asked him if he had clear contact with, which he said he did. And then I said I need a 911 emergency call made," said Whiting.

He says the Mohave County Sheriff's Office dispatched a helicopter from Phoenix. Whiting stayed in contact with Magee and the sheriff's office the whole time.  "It's about an hour and a half that we were on the radio. It's quite a ways out there."

The woman was transported to a Las Vegas hospital. She's expected to make a full recovery.  Whiting said he doesn't consider himself a hero. "It's what I train for, it's what I practice doing. I've done emergency training with them, participated in various exercises with the public health department," he said.

He said he's grateful he was prepared and glad he could set a good example for his sons.  "Jared's comment was, 'You know, this gave me a really warm feeling.' After this was all over he told me that."