Thank you Colonel Susan Helms

Voyager24 writes "Susan J. Helms (Colonel, USAF) and NASA Astronaut on Expedition 2 in the ISS yesterday remarked to three hams who had contacted her on a pervious pass. Colonel Helms suggested that they shouldn't keep contacting the ISS since they'd already made contact with her.



This is a welcome suggestion on the part of Colonel Helms. Hopefully these hams, for some reason unknown, who constantly try and contact the ISS on every pass, even though they'd made contact before, will listen to Colonel Helms suggestion and give other first time hams a chance to contact her or others in the ISS. The ISS can only be heard for a very limited amount of time during a pass, usually only a couple of minutes at the most.


I can't understand why these hams, would constantly bottle up the only uplink frequency to the ISS, and continuously try to make multiple daily contacts with the ISS when there are many hundreds or thousands of hams who've tried and can't get through.
It would be the gentlemanly thing to do, since they've made contact already, not to try again and give others a chance. I finally made contact on 05/09 with Colonel Helms and have not tried to "call her back".


I have tried to help other first time callers with flight information, frequencies and times of best possible contact with the ISS. Why don't these other hams, who've made these contacts, help other first time hams attempting to contact the ISS with usefully suggestions?"