In 2007 and 2008 Frank DH7FB and I discussed possibilities of reflecting 2 m signals on the solar paddles of the ISS. We believed this should be possible given the distance of the ISS is just some 400 km high.

So we started a series of tries in cw. Soon it became obvious that the fast changing doppler was a major problem, particulary when you need three hands: one for the horizontal rotor, one for the vertical rotor (remember at DF2ZC the 3 dB angles are just some 13°), one for the cw keyer and one for RIT for following the doppler. Yes, that makes it four hands needed. However if you program the memory keyer with the callsigns, reports and rogers (just like in the old hscw ms times) you only need three hands....which still is a problem, of course.

After some learning lessons we could regularly make complete QSOs between DF2ZC (JO30RN) and DH7FB/P (JO63SC), 506 km.

Here are some mp3 files of our tries and QSOs.


iss_bounce_20080101.mp3 [662 KB]

iss_bounce_20080209.mp3 [720 KB]

iss_bounce_20080223.mp3 [283 KB]

The four 12 elements DK7ZB yagis at DH7FB/P (Photo DH7FB)

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