Lonely Pass of Space Station, With Only NA1SS CW Beacon and Me!

 Listened to the pass of International Space Station Cross Band Repeater at about 5.20 pm IST (UTC + 5.30) hoping to have some contacts as the SSTV transmission would have been paused for School Contact at Quebec, Canada. It was a Western Pass with about 40 degrees maximum elevation in this region. I could hear my call on the downlink when the satellite was near the time of closest approach (TCA), with my Moxon Yagi pointed in that direction. I could not hear any other station till then. So I went outside and rotated the antenna once again towards the direction of loss of signal (LOS). Soon after returning to the radio, I could clearly hear the NA1SS beacon in CW. So I was happy that there was no problem in my setup. My friends in the region would have been busy celebrating the Pooja Holidays or looking for SSTV transmissions on 145.800 MHz, which is more popular in this region than the cross band repeater! Of course, most of them who are really active would not have waited for SSTV as they would have noted that it was being paused for the school contact. Here is the curated pass recording, capturing my audio on the downlink and the NA1SS CW beacon.



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