Subject: mirnews.397
From: "C.M. vd Berg" <[email-masked]>
To: Multiple recipients of list <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 09:30:33 -0500

MIRNEWS.397                                  5 DECEMBER 1997

Spacewalks (EVA's): On 3.12 RKK Energiya published   changes of the EVA
plan for December 1997.  This publication suggested that EVA's had been
planned for 6, 12 and 30.12.97. In the sequence of these EVA's the most
difficult one was scheduled for 6.12.97, i.e. the installation of rails and
anchors at the outersurface of the module Spektr. However radiotraffic
during the last days did not give any indication of preparations or
exercises for the first EVA:  on the contrary the Russians used all the
available time for so called prescribed activities: maintenance, repairs
(for instance of a cooling circuit) and monitoring the airpressure
regulation. David Wolf indefatigably continued his experiments. Meanwhile
the 'desinformation' of RKK Energiya has been silently erased. 

Future plans:  

The departure of Progress-M36  will take place on 17.12.97.  After
undocking Pr-M36 will release the mini-satellite Inspektor for a test in
the framework of a Russian/German project.  Inspektor will make video- and
photo's of Progress-M36 as well as of the MIR-space station. 

The next EVA's are still scheduled for 5 and 9.01.1998. 

Radio-amateurism: 

Vinogradov prepared the radio-amateur system in the module Priroda for the
test which had been proposed by the Amsat organisation.  The purpose of
this test was to see whether it would be possible to use a split band
configuration (uplink 437.850 mc, downlink 145.800 mc) of the PMS station
on 145.985 mc. During many conversations via the geostationary Altair-2
Vinogradov coordinated his activities with the MIR radio-amateur manager,
Sergey Samburov (RV3DR).   

It was clear that not all went as had been planned. Vinogradov also had
problems with cable connections and he had to look for adapters to connect
different cables. He told that he also tried to use 145.800 and 145.550 mc,
but this was not a success  due to dense traffic  on these frequencies. 
(Unclear whether he used these frequencies split
 -with 437.850 m down- or simplex on 2 m. only).  Stations on earth
received him loud and clear but his reception was very poor. 

Chris van den Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202