MIRNEWS.129    28 APRIL 1992

MIR-COMMUNICATIONS:

During conversations with members of the flight-control (TsUP) in Kalingrad it
became obvious that those responsible for the safety of the MIR-crew concern
about the long periods in which they do not have radiocontact with MIR. This
period can increase to 9 hours in 24 hours. They want to close this gap in what
always has been announced as 'a stable and permanent radiocontact'. The long
periods of radiosilence have been caused by the taking out of service of the
fleet of tracking ships as of 1 Jan. 1992. Of course they often use 1 or 2
geostationary satellites (Altair, in the past they spoke about Luch), but they
still have to enhance that system. The 9 hours radiosilence however is not
absolute: the cosmonauts have the possibility to establish radiocontact with
terrestrial stations: i.e. radio-amateur stations. So in cases of serious
problems or even emergency the crew can try to have information relayed via
amateur links. In fact this already can be realized operationally: the
well-known Leonid Labutin, UA3CR, chief of the clubstation of the Moscow
Adventures Club, RK3KP, has the necessary international contacts and also
proved his operational ability during several expeditions and other events.
Eager to play a crucial role in this field is Sergey Samburov, RV3DR, (grandson
of the famous Tsiolkovskiy, who started to realize the 'space-flight dreams'
into well-founded studies and concrete rocketconstructions). Samburov has a job
in the huge space concern NPO-Energiya, which constructed almost everything
whattis needed for MIR and also is responsible for the exploitation of the
space-complex. Samburov fought a long struggle to establish notion for radio
amateurism in manned space-flight in that firm. He even got a temporary licence
for an amateurstation inside NPO Energiya (call R3K) for a contest due to the
Day of Spaceflight, 12 April 1992. He will try to renew that licence or even to
give it a permanent status. If so, it can be used by radio-amateurs all over ther
orld for the relay, via HF and/or packet radio means, of all information the
MIR crew will have to send to Kalingrad's TsUP in cases of problems during
radio-silence. During our conversations in TsUP Sergey asked me to inform radio
amateurs in east and west about his ideas. The frequency he has in mind is
145.550Mc, but in this field there might be a lot of other options. Sergey, likeohis
famous grandfather, is a real 'hustler' and he is sure that, with the
support of friends all over the orld, he can achieve that what TsUP and the
cosmonauts need: 'stable and inintermitted radiocontact'.

145.550 mc: Regularly this frequency is in use for MIR's packet radio. Thusfar
the new crew seldom or not used this frequency for calls in phone is caused by
the fact that they had an enormous lot of ork to do with a high priority.
UA3CR as well as RV3DR asured me that Sasha Kaleri, U8MIR, is very
enthousiastic about amateur radio and that he ill prove this as soon as
possible.

Chris v.d. Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202.