ARISS International Team Teleconference

Tuesday, September 18, 2012, 11:15 UTC (7:15 am ET)

Participants:

Gaston Bertels

Mark Steiner

Rosalie White

Dave Taylor

Larry Agabekov

Masanobu Tsuji

Keigo Komuro

Ken Nichols

Lou McFadin

Keith Pugh

Francesco De Paolis

Carol Jackson

David Jordan

Frank Bauer

Carlos Eavis

Not attending:

Sergey Samburov

Daniel Lamoureux

Maurice André Vigneault

Barry Baines

Kenneth Ransom

Steve Ponder

Graham Shirville

Fabio Azzarello

Carlos Neta

Trinesha Dixon

Pam Fox

Bill Boston

Darin Cowan

ARISS I Agenda:

Administrative session

1. ARISS-I board elections - Gaston Bertels, ON4WF

Traditionally, the ARISS Canadian delegates take responsibility for organizing the election process for the ARISS international offices. Daniel has begun this again for the election of ARISS international officers for the years 2013-2014. The ARISS Team thanks him. He has sent each ARISS delegate a request for nominations; he will accept nominations until October 14.

2. ARISS-I face to face meeting - Gaston Bertels, ON4WF

During our last teleconference meeting, we discussed the ARISS Annual Meeting (face-to-face meeting) that was to tentatively be held in April 2013. Recently, Gaston heard that there are financial difficulties on the part of the US team. There will probably be no funding available for travel by NASA staff – for Trinesha, Mark, and probably Kenneth. AMSAT and ARRL are having a tight financial year, as well. Mark has asked that we delay the meeting until past October 2013, when NASA's next fiscal year 2014 begins. Please send your comments about this to Gaston, and we will discuss the topic again at the October meeting.

3. New Business

We welcome Frank Bauer's return to the ARISS Team.

General Session

4. Meeting with Russian team - Kenneth Ransom,

N5VHO Kenneth is in Russia on business travel. Sergey is also on travel, and unable to meet with Kenneth. Kenneth's meetings were with the Russian crew training staff (rather than the Russian technical staff). He learned that a Kenwood TM-D710 has been upmassed to the ISS for use with Russian SSTV experiments, and these will work in parallel with the use of the TM-D700. Discussions included how to avoid scheduling conflicts with the school contacts.

5. HamTV project - Gaston Bertels, ON4WF

Upmass of the equipment for the HamTV projects is slated for flight ATV-4 in April 2013. Luca Parmitano will install the equipment in the Columbus module. ESA has given a name to the equipment, and calls it "Hamvideo". The whole system including the uplinks is known by ESA as "HamTV". It has been confirmed that ground stations will be installed in Europe. Appropriate locations will be determined when the usable range of the DATV transmissions has been verified experimentally.

6. Columbus module status - Kenneth Ransom, N5VHO

Kenneth was not able to take part in the teleconference meeting, but we know the Ericsson UHF equipment is operational on packet although Gaston reports there isn't a lot of activity over Europe.

Kenneth is still working on getting approval for upmass of the VHF Ericsson equipment that will replace the one currently on board the ISS. Lou reported that new questions seem to arise fairly often by those who will be giving approval.

7. New Business

Our next meeting will be 16 October 2012.

Respectfully submitted,

Rosalie White, K1STO

ARISS-International Secretary-Treasurer