MIRNEWS.346 22 FEBRUARY 1997 MIR'97: Dr. Reinhold Ewald amuses himself well on board of the MIR spacestation. His private domain is in the Module Kristall (T). His American colleague Linenger has his private quarters in the Module Spektr (O). He is sleeping there , has room for personal belongings and he found a free surface on the wall to fasten some photographs. Korzun will remain commander of the complex until his departure on 2.03.1997. Ewald coordinates the experiments which he has to execute during this mission with Sigmund J„hn (at TsUP) or with Hans Schlegel (in GSOC). From the radiotraffic could be derived that Ewald is on schedule with the MIR'97 experimental program. Now and then something goes wrong. This was the case with an experiment planned for 19.02.1997: In the framework of a medical experiment he had to drink 200 ml tomato-juice with salt, but bad quality of the juice made this impossible. The experiments with the Titus-oven, the French Alice-2 installation (studies of the characteristics of liquids), MEDEX (medical experiments) and others have been successfully executed thusfar. Anniversaries: On 20.02.1997 Tsibliyev celibrated his 43d birthday. Exactly 11 years ago the Baseblok of MIR was launched. (20.02.1986 OO29 TsUP time; 19.02.1986 2129 UTC) Problems with a gyrodyne: On the eve of these anniversaries the crew had to solve a serious problem. On 19.02.1997 during the pass in orbit 62876 (1521-1527UTC) TsUP gave Korzun data, which had to be loaded in the system Svet for the movements control of the complex. Korzun asked what the reason was. TsUP informed him that Telemetry had revealed a malfunction of a gyrodyne in Kvant-2 (Module-D). In the evening and night the crews had to work hard to eliminate this failure. Communications: Contrary to previous expectations the German GSOC Oberpfaffenhofen not very often utilizes the possibility for direct links with MIR via the (almost) geostationary Altair-1 (Cosmos-2054). Apart from the 143.625 mc, Ewald regularly uses the so called UKW-2 (VHF-2) on 130.165 mc for communications with his consultants (Sigmund Jähn) at TsUP and (Hans Schlegel) in GSOC. Now and then Linenger can be heard on that frequency with the American consultative group in TsUP . The 145.800 mc is the downlink ham frequency for Packet radio or phone. Mostly Korzun can be heard here. A few times Ewald used this facility for contacts with German radio-amateurs. He uses the callsign DL2MIR. In the simplex mode he sometimes can be heard on 145.925 mc. Chris v.d. Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202.