Ancient Web: A 1998 Mir Radio School Day Failed, Then Reached 27 Stations

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

On April 27, 1998, students at Floyd Magnet School in Montgomery, Alabama, were ready to receive digital radio packets from the Russian space station Mir. They had tracking software, a radio station and a schedule for the orbital pass. Then nothing happened.

Read the Floyd Magnet School Mir/APRS test report.

The author, amateur-radio operator Larry Johnston (KD4CGA), recounts setting up the demonstration with Mike (KB4JHU). Students watched Mir approach on a computer running STSPLUS while other equipment displayed APRS, the Automatic Position Reporting System. A passing spacecraft was supposed to relay position and message packets from ground stations around the world.

But Mir was not in the expected digital radio mode. Johnston writes that the planned first pass ended without a signal. The organizers tried to contact the crew; several passes came and went without the promised exchange.

The day after was part of the story

The report includes a subsequent account by Bob Bruninga describing what happened on April 28. The station's packet equipment came online, allowing 27 schools or other participating stations to exchange or receive information during the make-up test. The page transcribes greetings and bulletins, including one encouraging students to study hard.

Three linked ground stations—in the United States, Spain and Taiwan—were intended to feed observations to an Internet display. Bruninga explains that the web monitor itself had problems, operating on the silent first day and missing most of the useful second day's packets.

The page preserves the texture of a real educational experiment: photographs of students, a communications trailer and computers, actual packet headers from participating stations, and an unembellished account of equipment not cooperating. It even reproduces the error-prone live workflow rather than disguising it as an effortless success.

A separate satellite-observing introduction on the same host explains how to track orbiting spacecraft generally. This article covers a specific school event, with a named place, date, results and firsthand record.

The original footer says the school page was created April 27 and last updated April 30, 1998, using Webford 2.01. That precise date makes it an exceptional early educational-web time capsule.

Explore the original school report, photos and received messages.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.