Author: Pete Reyes

So there I was driving home after dropping off my daughter at school and as always I am fiddling with my Kenwood TMV-71A VHF/UHF Transceiver. I start scanning the saved memory channels and the radio stops at 146.460MHz. On that frequency I hear chatter through a considerable deluge of static. Right away I discern that the cadence of the chatter is not the norm for regular amateur traffic. Listening closer, I raise the volume turn the squelch all the way down and turn everything else off to focus on the traffic. I suspect it may be the ISS and quickly look up "146.460 ISS" on google. Sure enough I confirm that it is the frequency often used by the ISS. An additional search yields a current map which tracks the ISS and as suspected they are over the Gulf of Mexico.

The excitement sets in and I get on the KD4LZA 444.800 repeater to sound the alarm and get more ears on this. I get confirmations from Steve W1HQL and Charlie N4CRE that they too are hearing it. Steve confirmed, but the signal was so low that it was too difficult to hear. The signal fading, and life rushing back to remind me that I had other responsibilities than playing radio and trying to listen to Astronauts traveling 254 miles over head at 4.76 miles per second or roughly 17,400 MPH.

Now, I am going about my daily responsibilities and that pesky thing called work, when I get a call from Charlie with news that he had kept on listening, but instead of those buckets of static and QRM, of course Charlie had full quieting on the ISS! I mean have you seen his station? Anyways, I digress, he was kind enough to send me a video with the the crystal clear audio from the ISS.

As it turns out, the International Space Station Expedition Team 66 was doing it's Space Walk number 79 to install the IROSA 3A power channel to expand the power of their solar array. With an expected mission time of 6 hours 30 minutes and open on all channels we were bound to be showered with these radio waves.