Working and Hearing Lot of Stations on Amateur Radio on International Space Station!

There was a Western pass of the International Space Station with maximum elevation of around 50 degrees in my region, starting from 4.54 pm IST (UTC+5.30). As usual, I pointed my Moxon Yagi for LEO satellite operations towards the direction of maximum elevation of the pass just before the arrival of the Space Station, by manual rotation of the mast on my first floor terrace.

This was the pass direction shown at N2YO.COM. It told me that the closest approach will be around 4.59 pm IST and I can expect to hear the stations best near that time.

A fast animation of the Argentinian Amsat Webpage which I use for manual Doppler correction in my IC 2730 radio is shown here. It shows the change in direction, elevation, and distance of the satellite along with the frequency to be tuned in the radio for VHF and UHF. You may note sudden jump in between when I could not take screen shots while I was busy calling stations and later changing antenna! I usually make changes only when the frequency displayed is off frequency by 2.5 kHz as the minimum tuning step in my radio is only 5 kHz.

Here is the audio recording from the pass of International Space Station recorded using a mobile phone kept over the speaker of the radio. Callsigns heard are shown for ease of recognition as audio may not be always that clear from a fast moving satellite. The satellite passes from one horizon to another in a matter of just 10 minutes and completes one revolution around the Earth in about 90 minutes! Towards the end of the pass, when the satellite was to the North, more than 90 degrees from the direction of my Moxon Yagi, I disconnected the PL 259 connector and connected the PL 259 connector of my 40/10m combination dipole. I could hear a couple of stations faintly even with that antenna when the satellite was quite far away, beyond 1100 km towards the end of the pass!