AGAF at HAM RADIO fair 2005 in Germany -------------------------------------- With 30 degrees Celsius outside we were lucky to have a cool athmosphere inside the hall A1 at the 30th International Exhibition for radio amateurs in Friedrichshafen end of June. Only the live video link from the Pfaender mountain in Austria beyond Lake Constance remembered us at the AGAF stand of the heat at the outpost. Some students from the Wuppertal University engaged in the DATV development were with us working as technical consultants or as cameramen like Andre, DO1AAW. When the DARC staff came around with officials from the Department of Trade and Industry, Uwe DJ8DW explained the status of digital amateur television. Many hams from different countries asked the AGAF team with Heinz DC6MR and Klaus DL4KCK for technical details or received their TV-AMATEUR issue #137 hot off the presses. On a video monitor spectators saw themselves acting lagged because of the typical MPEG delay time through the DATV TX on display, and via laptop and graphical control software the hard-disc integrated into the DATV exciter played back some of the scenes recorded before. On Saturday Uwe DJ8DW and Willi DC5QC realised this year`s peak level of AGAF activities at HAM RADIO: live video sent via GMSK modulation on 434 MHz (2 MHz rf bw) with 7 Watt from the german bank of Lake Constance over 20 km to Pfaender mountain and from there back to the fair hall in Friedrichshafen over 28 km via QPSK modulation on 1255 MHz with 8 Watt. After a short lunch break another portable GMSK link was established from the Gehrenberg over 38 km. At the receiver monitor several OMs congratulated, i.e. DC0BV, DJ3DY and DK7EI. Heinrich DC0BV was also delighted by encouraging news about ham radio in space, which he served in a very active role at times of the russian space station MIR. But before the envisioned ATV links could emerge the whole station was dumped into the pacific ocean. Now ON4WF reported in his lecture at the HAM RADIO fair about future ARISS activities: in July 2005 the ISS astronauts will dump an old russian space suit equipped with electronics and ham gear into an orbit during a space walk. In the following weeks that "Suitsat" will transmit around the clock several greeting messages in different languages from children all over the world on 144,990 MHz with 500 mW, additionally an SSTV image stored in the same chips. A much more impressive impact on the public is expected from the future ham radio traffic on board the new european ISS laboratory "Columbus" constructed now. It shall get ham radio antennas for 70 cm, 23 cm and 13 cm, enabling first ARISS contacts on SHF. With the Columbus module being located at some considerable distance from the other two ARISS stations, this will permit parallel operations on the new bands at the same time as the existing operations. The availability of these new frequencies will enable us to establish wideband and video operations for the first time. This facility will provide ATV facilities for School contacts and, additionally, continuous transponder operation. Uwe DJ8DW assured ON4WF face to face of a donation of AGAF DATV equipment for ARISS. ESA has decided to cover the installation cost of the ARISS antennas on Columbus exceeding 100.000 euro (coaxial feedthroughs, coax cables on the hull of the module, etc.) completely, but for development and manufacturing of the antennas your donations are still needed, see http://www.ariss-eu.org/columbus.htm Klaus, DL4KCK