On board was a crew of seven: Colonel Rick Husband; Lt. Colonel Michael Anderson; Commander Laurel Clark; Captain David Brown; Commander William McCool; Dr. Kalpana Chawla; & Ilan Ramon, a Colonel in the Israeli Air Force.
The Nacogdoches Amateur Radio Club will again hold a special event station in remembrance of the shuttle disaster on Feb. 1, 2003.
The event will occur on Saturday, Feb. 6, 2010. Ham operators from other areas are welcome to attend the event. If you cannot come to Nacogdoches, we would like to hear from you on 20 or 40 meters. Operation will begin at 0800 CST (1400 UTC) and end at 1500 CST (2100 UTC).
The station will be set up at the McMichael Middle School located at 4330 SE Stallings Drive in Nacogdoches. This is on Loop 224 between Hwy 21 east and FM 2259. The event commemorates how the ham radio operators from the local area went into action immediately after the shuttle crash to provide emergency communications and relay traffic necessary to the coordination of the event. Within hours, ham operators from across the state of Texas and other states as well also became involved. Many ham radio clubs sent members to assist in providing communications for the varied search teams. Other clubs provided towers and repeater equipment necessary to relay vital information.
In honor of the work performed by Amateur Radio, the Nacogdoches Amateur Radio Club has a special event station on the first Saturday in February of each year. The special event station allows ham radio operators to meet together in person to discuss the events of the fateful day in February 2003. Local club members operate radios set up at the school to make contacts across the country via various frequencies. We plan to operate on 7200 and 14270, plus or minus QRM. The local vhf repeater of 146.84, negative offset, 141.3 PL will be monitored as a talk-in channel.
More info about the actual shuttle crash / disaster can be found on this website.
For additional information, please contact Rusty Sanders, kd5gen@arrl.net.
