[amsat-bb] Re: ISS crew ham contacts?

[Joe Fitzgerald]

Nate Duehr wrote:
>
>   The  
> percentage that find radio interesting for radio (instead of the more  
> common, "Wow you can talk to someone far away!" astonishment of the  
> past), even when invited to a ham shack to see it in person, is  
> diminishing, and I'm not sure that trend will slow down anytime soon.   
>
>   
Well, it is a tough sell from the communication only standpoint.   My 
thesis is that we must sell ham radio on the idea that we can do our 
communication without the benefit of the infrastructure of billion 
dollar multinational corporations, but rather with our own equipment and 
the ionosphere (or the transponder that my fellow hams built) and know 
how.  And when we are finished building our stations to allow us to talk 
to those hams on the other side of the world, what do we talk about?  
Our radios, antennas, transponders and/or the ionosphere!
> .  I want to know how they get the  
> bandwidth up and down on the IP network!  (GRIN)  Is that a TDRSS  
> function?
>
>   
I am almost certain that it is, although now that you mention it I also 
wonder how they deal with latency.

-Joe KM1P