After less than a day in space, civilian space traveler Charles Simonyi,
\nKE7KDP\/HA5SIK, was already making contacts with the earthbound ham radio
\ncommunity from NA1SS. The billionaire software pioneer and aviator arrived
\nApril 10 at the International Space Station with the Expedition 15 crew of
\nRussian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin, RN3FI, and Dr Oleg Kotov. The trio
\nlaunched two days earlier in a Soyuz spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome in
\nKazakhstan. Ron Hashiro, AH6RH, in Honolulu was among the lucky ones. He
\ntells ARRL that after putting out a blind call, he spoke not only with
\nSimonyi but with Expedition 14\/15 Flight Engineer Suni Williams, KD5PLB.<\/p>\n
“I mentioned to her that I had listened to her earlier contact with the
\nschool in India and it was a thrill to speak with her directly,” Hashiro
\nrecounted. “She said that Hawaii was her favorite place and had some
\nrelatives in Hawaii.” Then, Hashiro says, Williams told him someone else was
\ninterested in talking with him, and Simonyi came on a few minutes later.<\/p>\n
“I welcomed Charles to ham radio and asked him if he was the author of the
\n“Hungarian notation” of Windows programming, which he acknowledged,” said
\nHashiro. He told Simonyi that he was involved in Windows programming more
\nthan 20 years ago, and was glad to meet its creator. Hashiro deemed the
\noccasion “a fabulous and eventful evening.”<\/p>\n
Flying under contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency, Simonyi also
\nhas been running through a list of four scheduled Amateur Radio on the
\nInternational Space Station (ARISS) school contacts, including one with a
\nschool in his native Hungary.<\/p>\n
On April 12, Simonyi responded via Amateur Radio to upward of 30 questions
\nposed by students at Fairborn High School in Ohio, telling them he’s
\nenjoying microgravity now that he’s become used to it. Simonyi also talked
\nabout why he wanted to go into space.<\/p>\n
“I wanted to make a contribution to civilian space flight and assist in
\nspace station research, and also to have a fantastic experience,” he said.
\nAs to why he flew with Russian cosmonauts and not with NASA, Simonyi said,
\n“NASA doesn’t fly space tourists yet, so the Russians are the only game in
\ntown.” Simonyi paid a reported $25 million for his space adventure.<\/p>\n
While in space, Simonyi will do some maintenance on the ham radio gear
\naboard the ISS as well as testing to isolate an antenna problem, and he’ll
\nreprogram the Phase 2 NA1SS transceiver to correct a configuration problem.
\nHe’ll also conduct some research before returning home April 20 with the
\nExpedition 14 crew of Michael Lopez-Alegria, KE5GTK, and Mikhail Tyurin,
\nRZ3FT, who have been in space since last September. Williams is scheduled to
\nreturn home this summer on the shuttle Endeavour.<\/p>\n
Frequencies in use for ARISS general QSOs: Voice and packet downlink: 145.80
\nMHz (worldwide); Voice uplink: 144.49 MHz for Regions 2 and 3 (the Americas,
\nand the Pacific) and 145.20 MHz for Region 1 (Europe, Central Asia and
\nAfrica). All frequencies are subject to Doppler shift.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After less than a day in space, civilian space traveler Charles Simonyi, KE7KDP\/HA5SIK, was already making contacts with the earthbound ham radio community from NA1SS. The billionaire software pioneer and… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":612599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ARRL"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/612599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}