Without a way of knowing which satellite passing overhead was the ISS, in the narrow windows each day where you could see them well enough to correctly point a Yagi at one, you’d quickly run out of battery before making a relevant contact. Also the people on the ISS rarely listen or respond, the most used ham equipment on the ISS is basically a glorified repeater so you’d also have to get above the pileup of all the satellite chasers just trying to log contacts.
Comment on What if the Internet Goes Down? - 15 Jan, 7PM CET
user224@lemmy.sdf.org 1 week agoWhat about more extreme cases, say Castaway (movie) type situation. Stranded on an island in middle of nowhere.
But conveniently, one of the packaged has a functional 2m battery powered radio and a Yagi too. There’s no one you can make contact with, except… the ISS.
What if the ISS was the only station you could contact?
“Hello International Space Station, I am stranded on an island after a plane crash. Can you help?”
btsax@reddthat.com 6 days ago
unphazed@lemmy.world 1 week ago
One of the coolest things in my opinion about radio is the ability to skip off the upper atmosphere and bounce a signal back down halfway across the globe. You can also bounce a signal off the moon.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 6 days ago
2m doesn’t bounce off the atmosphere. You really need 10m for that. 6m in the mist perfect ideal scenarios but it’s still very rare (and in this scenario you aren’t gonna know when). EME (the moon stuff) is also pretty tricky and requires a lot of power because of how messed up the signals get in the process.