MIRNEWS.273    2 OCTOBER 1995

Progress-M29:

The launch of this freighter from Baykonur is on
schedule for 8.10.1995 at abt. 1853UTC.

MIR-operations:

The spacestation now passes mainly during the
nighthours which means that monitoring of the VHF-frequencies
is not so fruitful. After the departure of Soyuz-TM21 the new
crew had a lot of work to do: Thomas Reiter is very active
with the Euromir95 program. Before he could start with the
experiments he had to make preparations, i.e. calibrating,
repairs, installing software, etc. He often was assisted by
Sergey Avdeyev. The whole crew is still executing old experi
ments used during foreign expeditions (mainly French and
Austrian). Reiter coordinates his work with people at TsUP,
mostly with his stand-in Christer Fuglesang. These conversati
ons are in english. Gidzenko and Avdeyev had to cope with a
lot of technical problems. On 14.09.1995 the gyrodynes fell
silent possibly due to a malfunction of the main computer
(Ts.V.M.-1). The crew solved this problem within 24 hours.
Other malfunctions gave them a lot of work: lifesystems as
BKV-3 (an airconditioning filtersystem and the Elektrons
(systems for the production of oxygen) had to be mended and
got special attention. Reiter is the first foreign cosmonaut
who is entitled to function as a boardengineer, but thusfar he
did not give indications that he did something in this field.
Probably he is too busy with his Euromir95 tasks.

Radio-amateur traffic:

Sometimes the 145.550 mc has been in
use for downlink packetradio. Monitoring of the proposed
downlink frequency 145.800 mc did not give results. There have
been attempts to use this frequency in duplex with uplink
145.200 mc, but these have not been awarded with success.
There has been a lot of traffic on 145.550 mc but mainly out
of our range (the USA and New Zealand). Some short QSO's with
the amateurstation of Oberpfaffenhofen have been reported.
Certainly we can expect a lot of activities in the HAM-field
when MIR's passes are in the eveninghours again, so also
during the free time of the crew. Monitoring 145.550 and
145.800 mc certainly will be useful.

Altair (Cosmos-2054):

Though scarcely, this geo is still
operational for MIR-TsUP traffic. There is a downlink on
10.830 Ghz; the beacon on 11.380 GHz did not resume operati
ons. There has been word that the frequency 13.7 GHz also has
been used for downlink traffic. So: Handy-men, there is work
to do!

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