Pinging the International Space Station thanks to APRS and the ISS Robot

>    I haven't had a response from the ISS robot for a couple days.Quite the contrary this morning.  Today was an example of one of the reasons why I start my day with an ISS robot ping.

Parked the car in the high point of the parking lot which seems to work a bit better and sent out  my first query.  Response was almost instantaneous.  Not only that but it took a couple seconds to register that the next pass was a whole minute away.

  2016-02-22 09:50:33 PST: WA7NWP-9>ISS: 1
  2016-02-22 09:50:34 PST: ISS>WA7NWP-9: AOS 1m2s S SE^8 E 8m

Wow.  Lucky morning.  Seems a low pass which I wouldn't ordinarily be interested in but what the heck.   Switched from the PM4 (96UHF on 440.800) over to PM5 (144.825 digi via RS0ISS) and listened.  Was surprised to hear a weak packet.   So I beaconed a few times.  Once it appeared I heard a digipeat of my packet but it was much weaker than the first packet and still nothing decoded on the mobile.

So heard two weak packets.  Probably ISS and that alone was cool and worth the effort.   Came in and checked the ariss.net page .    Yeah!

There I am the sole station representing the PNW.   Been a long time since I was on the ariss map - always a kick.

Checked my heard packets and I see there were two iGates that picked me up..

  20160222175441,WA7NWP-7>4W3TVU,RS0ISS*,qAS,KG6HSQ-2:`2&3l!=>/]"4Z}
  20160222175457,WA7NWP-7>4W3TVY,RS0ISS*,qAR,NA5SS-10:`2&/l!=>/]"4Y}

So - Thank you Lynn for the robot.   It worked well this morning.

73
Bill, WA7NWP

Update.   I was curious where the two stations were that heard my packets.

NA5SS is in Albuquerue using a Raspberry PI.

 NA5SS-10 · center · zoom · info

2016-02-12 20:36:18 - 2016-02-23 08:04:17
PyMultimonAPRS RX Only SAT-iGate
Raspberry Pi with RTL-SDR dongle on 145.825Mhz


The other receiving station, KG6HSQ, is in Southern California between LA and San Diego.

Entering ARRL Contests

> I have an easy logbook for contest; N3FPJ’s stuff works good for me.
At the PNW gathering, there was talk of what could be done to increase activity in contests.   During the discussion it came to me that the whole reason I haven't had my call in the last hundred or so contests was because I wasn't set up with a logging program.   Sure I should - and someday I will - when everything else on the list is done... Until then, I'm using the simple, quick and easy QRZ.com log for my memorable contacts - like my first DStar ping on Sunday.

It was that easy to exchange a couple reports and get my call in the contest - I'm sure I (and thousands others!!!) would be doing it.