Man reaches astronauts with amateur radio

All the interesting information is missing in this article. It’s like writing about technical details of the telephone network under the headline “Man Reaches President With Normal Telephone”. It’s not surprising that the White House has a telephone number, it’s surprising that the call was answered.<p>Reaching something that is merely a few hundred miles away with no obstacles blocking the signal doesn’t seem very challenging to me. The problem has to be the speed with which the ISS is moving across the sky which doesn’t give you very much time to make contact.<p>Much more interesting, however, would be why the hell the ISS is listening and responding.

The article, as ugh points out, that it is very much unencumbered with facts.<p>Here are some references that talk about the process in general: <a href="http://www.arrl.org/frequently-asked-questions" rel="nofollow">http://www.arrl.org/frequently-asked-questions</a><p>There are other references available on that page.<p>Several of the ISS crew are licensed amateur radio operators, and they will be available on the air as their work schedule permits. Often contacts are scheduled with school classrooms, as noted <a href="http://www.arrl.org/ariss-contact-stories" rel="nofollow">http://www.arrl.org/ariss-contact-stories</a>.<p>So part of the problem is the angular velocity of the station as seen from earth, but with omni-directional antennas on the ground, that is not a significant obstacle. The biggest obstacle is the work schedule of the crew.

I'm not sure what's more rare: working the space station or seeing a ham radio story covered by the media.

250 miles is nothing. I had a friend in college who's dad did this with a bunch of ham radio equipment and a huge satellite dish: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EME_(communications)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EME_(communications)</a>

Is this a security issue? Could someone hold open communications with them and effectively DOS Houston?