Pretty Good Test Report on USA pass of ISS at 1834 to 1839 UTC on 27 Oct 2017
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While not hearing that QIKCOM-1 has powered up, we dedicated the rest of the
pass time on the mid-afternoon pass over the USA of the ISS downlink.

Conclusion, HT's outdoors with whip antennas do not hear as well as we thought 
and the Uplink is more challenging than we thought.  But certainly gave the 
thrill expected of monitoring the ISS pass with an HT.  This was during mid-
afternoon class time on a Friday over Maryland with noob operators.

We had 6 radios, One was an Oscar class ground station plus 5 HT's outside.
* The Oscar station heard 11 stations (out of 32 packets total)
* HT with long dual band whip heard 4 stations
* HT with full size 1/4 whip heard 3 stations
* HT with long dual band whip heard 2 stations
* HT with rubber duck heard 2 stations
* HT with arrow heard one (but had bumped radio on 145.830!)

Of the 11 different stations heard by the OSCAR station:
* Two were heard 6 or 7 times
* One was heard three times
* four were heard twice, one using 5W & ELK, one 10W & quad, one 10W & ARROW
* four were heard once, one was a mobile,

HTs Receive performance: all of the stations heard by the HT's were from the 
same 5 in the middle of the pass, with none being more than  250 miles away.
The other six stations heard by the Oscar class ground station were up to a 
bit farther up to 600 miles away.

All 5 of our HTs were on the Planned-Test-1-minute schedule and NONE were 
heard by the ISS(digipeated).

Of all the 11 stations, three of the four heard twice were following the 
suggested protocol and so were assumed to be on a 1 minute schedule.  So, 
during an 8 minute pass, only got two packets through even though they had 
modest beams on uplink.  Again, probably during the middle of their overhead 
geometry.  But for our 4 minute window, then they had a 50% success rate.

The APRS-IS captured a total of 30 packets during the same time frame that we 
got 32 and only 2 or 3 were missed by either of us.  There were 8 different 
Igates with four of them contributing 4 to 6 packets and four contributing 
one or two.  All of this data was from the 4 minute pass window from first 
station heard by the Oscar class station to the last one heard by that 
station.  The APRS-IS of course heard other stations before and after, but 
the window was only taken during our OSCAR class pass.

The downlink was sparse and it is doubtful that there was too much overload 
on the uplink, (though we all know that the downlink says NOTHING about what 
the uplink receiver on ISS is having to deal with).  But that could be 
eliminated if we could get someone in Hawaii to do the same test.  Horizon 
to horizon with a few radios at the same time. On the same 1 minute test 
schedule.

The students with the handhelds were not skilled operators and so the 
attitude of the HT's and antennas relative to the ISS track should be 
considered completely random.

For what it's worth.

Bob, WB4aPR