Listening to Satellites
Tune in to space with a homemade yagi antenna.
Photography by Diana Eng
One of my favorite things to do is talk with other ham radio operators through satellites or the International Space Station (ISS). To do this, I stand on a rooftop and tune a handheld multiband radio while tracing the orbit of a satellite or the ISS with my homemade yagi antenna.
Orbiting satellites such as AO-51, SO-50, and AO-27 act as repeaters, relaying signals from low-power transceivers like mine back to hams elsewhere on the planet. So if you know where to aim the antenna, you can communicate around the world via space.
The ISS ...
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