ISSCOM 16 May 2007 (058) PERSONAL STATUS REPORT: It is high time to tell you all how I, being a stuborn listener of the Russian communications with the ISS , fared after my report ISSCOM.057 and what the perspectives are for the monitoring of the direct communications ofthe Russian ISS segment. One circumstance did not change: I still monitor the radiotraffic as the Russian channels continue to follow the practice gathered from the very beginning of the space era: I always calculate the passes within my range with the most recent 2-line elements and am alert to monitor all radio communications within those passes. The radio communications recorded in that way I transfer into one of the sites of my audio archives. Those files include the nowadays still scarce radio-amateur contacts within our range. In that respect I still remember with some nostalgia the many and successful radio ham activities from the MIR station. Much , so not all, can be found in my audio-archives. They were always busy: Haigneré, Krikalyov, Aleksandr Volkov, Musabayev, Manarov and many, many others. I always had to watch the radio amateur downlink. After the mission in which McArthur was on board ISS spontanuous QSO's do not often take place. Now we have to wait for agreements with members of the ISS crew and schools. Just the same as during the mission of our André Kuipers in 2004. During that mission André could not establish spontanuous QSO's with radio amateurs. As far as ham activities with schools the last ones (as far as within our range) took place on the 5th of May 2007. Only a few Dutch radio amateurs try to make QSO's. One of them is PD0RKC, who had a short contact with the American space tourist Charles Simonyi. This took place on April the 12th. Regretfully the interest of Dutch radio-amateurs in the operational communications of the ISS is very poor due to the fact that only a few of them understand the Russian language. As far as these operational communications are concerned the crew of the ISS, the Russians included, mostly use the NASA Ku- and S-band facilities. The extent in which the ISS crews use the Russian VHF communications depends on the kind of operation which is going on and the preference of the Russians on board. I also found differences in the choises the commander of the ISS makes. If this is a Russian more often the Russian facilities are used. This is the situation now: commander Yurchikhin is a Russian and so is the on board engineer Kotov. Fact is that the number of contacts via Russian facilities increased. Among those facilities is the system Regul. This system is installed in the Zvezda command module to be used mainly in relation to the traffic via one of the geostationary satellites of the Luch-1 type , for instance the Altair. The last Altair died in 1998 and the Russians never launched its successor Altair-3. There was no money for the carrier rocket and the Altair-3 is now in a museum in St. Petersburg. Using the transceiver for the Luch-1 relays Regul was able to transmit and receive Telemetry- and Television signals and also voice communications. The antenna Lira, installed on the Zvezda module, was foreseen to establish the link to and from the Luch-1 satellite. The frequencies for that link were 922.760 and 768.975 mc. In principle via those frequencies communications with tracking stations should be possible for voice as well as for Telemetry communications. Now and then I derived from VHF communications that Regul used, but I have no experience myself and I was not able to get support in this field from other sources. Via VHF-channels I can still monitor a lot of communications during pure Russian operations like the launches and flights of Progress-M ships and Soyuz-TMA ferries and Russian controlled EVA's. There are a lot of sources to get information, for instance NASA-TV, You tube, Russian- and western websites etc. Once in 24 hours NASA-TV brings a report of the ISS, which lasts 1 hour. Regretfully this is not real time, sometimes the report is about events 1 or 2 days earlier with the remark that the 'previous program was recorded'. Real time are reports of special operations, like for instance the recent approach and docking of the freighter Progress-M60. (The Americans use an own numbering and here is Progress-M60 the Progress-25. Protests against this method by puritans like your scribent did not change this.) Towards the final phase of the docking operation the communications could be monitored by NASA-TV. These communications took place via Russian channels, but were relayed to MCC Houston and from there retransmitted with a translation. During the approach via 121.750 and 130.165 mc I could monitor the signals of the stand-by TORU system. Yurchikhin was ready to use this remote control to steer the Progress-M60 if the automatic system Kurs should fail. During operations like this one I sometimes can monitor the communications between the crew of the ISS and the mission control in Korolyov simultanuously with the relay of MCC Houston. So I am still like the farmer ploughing through the mud. Fact is that the amount of reactions and questions compared with the Salyut- and MIR-eras and the beginning of the ISS operations decreased dramatically and so I have to find my motivation to continue 'ploughing' in my interest and personal enthousiasm. In a following ISSCOM report I hope to sum up all my findings. Good luck and keep tracking. Chris van den Berg, NL-9165