ISS Amateur Radio Status: May 28, 2001

Mount Everest:

By Miles Mann WF1F,

MAREX-MG (Manned Amateur Radio Experiment, North American Division)

Mount Everest:

When I told my wife I was going to Mount Everest to play ham radio, she thought I was joking. Then when documents arrived at the house from the Mountain climbing expedition, she began to worry. I was invited to go to Mount Everest to be the base camp communications engineer, responsible for daily image and data transmission from the 18,000 ft base camp back to the states. Of course I was going to bring plenty of ham gear too, including the MAREX SpaceCam1 project. I figured, if it would work on Everest at 18,000 feet, it should work on ISS at 250 Miles. At one point I needed 2 Yacks to carry the ham gear and 1 Yack for my stuff. I was planing on sending 50-100 SSTV images per day from the Mt. Everest base camp to the south pacific on 80 meters daily. Then have several stations in India and Australia relay the images around the world for all to see. Unfortunately due to the poor economy here in the states, the funding dried up. One of my sponsors had to back out. Oh We’ll, the good news is my wife is happy, and I am sleeping in a warm bed, rather than a cot at –30 below.

The Mountain climb is still continuing and you can see the travels of Mike Johnston on the web page.

You can read about Mike Johnston trip at this link:

Good luck Mike.