Hearing and Working Many on Space Station With CP22E VHF Antenna Below Roof Top

Yesterday night there was a high elevation pass of International Space Station around 10 pm. As it was raining and late night, I did not want to go on the terrace and point my antenna in the direction of satellite pass. Instead I thought of trying my CP22E VHF antenna, though it was below the top level of my sloping roof. Still I was quite happy to hear and work a lot of stations during that busy pass of Amateur Radio on International Space Station.

Here is a short video clip of my IC 2730 radio receiving Amateur Radio on International Space Station with CP22E VHF antenna, on UHF downlink! You can see that signal strength goes up to 4 segments on the display. Just to prior to this recording, it had even gone up to 6 segments display. It was on seeing that I thought of taking a video clip. At such signal levels, it is capable of opening the squelch, though we routinely keep squelch fully open on RX side in the radio to receive weak satellite signals. Audio will be muted on TX side.

Here is the curated audio recording of the pass.

Once again this illustrates that is is possible to work Amateur Radio on International Space Station even with very suboptimal setup, mainly because of the high power output of 5W compared to a few hundred milliWatts of most other Amateur Radio FM Satellites which are Cubesats. I hope that this will encourage more and more amateur radio operators to try LEO satellite operations. In fact I was having that as a dream ever since 1985 when I became a ham, though I could realise it only in 2023! Many senior hams in my region also share similar views and have come up on LEO satellites recently. Like me, they also have limitations in going outside and operating with handheld Yagi antennas and radios, especially during the current heavy monsoon season here.