Students Call Space Station With Home-Built Radio 330
Pizzutz writes "Four Toronto college students have accomplished a technological feat that their teachers are calling a first. The Humber College seniors made contact with the International Space Station Monday with a radio system they designed and built themselves. School officials say that, to their knowledge, that's never been accomplished by students at the college level." Somewhat disappointingly, the students actually did have permission to make contact.
Re:Your first radio (Score:5, Interesting)
It's going to be considerably more difficult for the next generation to build their first radios, once it's all gone digital.
You mean "write their first radios", since the era of hardware radios is essentially over? With the availability of very high speed/very high dynamic range ADCs and FPGAs capable of doing MPEG-4 decoding on the fly, I doubt you'll see much "building" and a lot more "writing" going on. Wanna get involved? Start Here [hpsdr.org].
Re:no kidding (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not a first (Score:3, Interesting)
I am sure it was more interesting back in the old days before the internet where the only thing around was long distance telephone. There is a slew of other technology that is accessible and easy to use for casual communication.
Only reason I am thinking about getting my license is because some of my activities involve the use of radios.
Re:no kidding (Score:3, Interesting)
I knew that hams speak to astronauts occasionally, but I always wondered:
Doesn't NASA get nervous that anyone with the right equipment can talk to the astronauts?
What exactly do you talk to an astronaut about? Is it all small talk? ("Hi, how's the weather up there?")