Radio Ham Goes Into Orbit With Cosmic Chat

Gordon Gunnels, a 37-year-old Santa Ana resident who is legally blind and has used a wheelchair for the last seven years, has depended on his ham radio to keep in contact with what is going on in the world. Last Thursday night, it was more like out of this world.

Gunnels was listening to an amateur radio news report that told of a new form of glasnost --the Soviet cosmonauts aboard the orbiting space station Mir had for the last 10 days been chatting with ham operators all over the world.

“At first I didn’t pay it any never mind, but then I thought, ‘What the heck? I’ll turn on that frequency.’ It worked.”

The person he got on the other end of the line at 6:20 p.m., he said, was Col. Vladimir Titov, who is commander of the station and goes by the amateur radio call numbers U1MIR. Titov and Musa Manarov on July 12 set the record for space endurance. On Dec. 21, Titov will have been in orbit for a year.

But he and Gunnels did not talk space navigation. They talked about ham radios.

“His English was better than mine,” said an excited Gunnels. “He asked me where I lived and told me I was sounding very strong. It was so clear it was like he was hovering right over my trailer.”

Then they had a “good chuckle over (Gunnels’) call sign, KB6BUN,” Gunnels said. “I told him it fit me perfectly because I’m in a wheelchair and always sitting on my buns. And that was about it for the conversation.”

Dave Sumner, executive vice president of the Connecticut-based American Radio Relay League, an organization of about 155,000 amateur radio enthusiasts, said the cosmonauts began hamming it up about a week and a half ago. There have been reports of contact from operators around the world. He has no idea how many operators in this country may have talked to them.

“We are very excited about it,” Sumner said, explaining this is the first time that the Soviets had participated in such an operation. U.S. Astronauts on several space shuttle flights have talked to ham operators.

Steve Nesbitt, a spokesman for the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said he did not know if the cosmonauts were broadcasting but that it “theoretically was possible if they have the right equipment on board.”

He noted that the shuttle astronauts had carried special radio equipment on board, including window antennas so that they could speak with ham operators. Southern California league members believe Gunnels is the first West Coast operator to contact the space station.

League member Earl Granison, a Los Angeles navigational equipment sales engineer, explained that the cosmonauts are transmitting an FM signal on 145.550 MHZ. They are listening for answers on 145.525 MHZ, or a secondary frequency, 145.575 MHZ. (These frequencies are authorized to be used by licensed amateur radio operators worldwide).

He added that the Soviet Union seems to have relaxed its monitoring of ham operators. When operators worldwide talk to each other, they send “verification cards,” which show that they did have the conversation. These cards are often very elaborate, sometimes including the picture of the operator’s family.

Until last year, Granison said, cards sent to amateur radio operators in the Soviet Union had to be mailed to a central post office box. Now the verification cards can be sent to the Soviet operator’s home address.

Up to Eight Hours a Day

Gunnels, who lives with his nurse attendant in a one-bedroom house trailer in Santa Ana, used to be a fireman for the state Department of Forestry before losing his muscle coordination and most of his sight because of multiple sclerosis. He took up the ham operator hobby “out of desperation,” he said,

He spends up to eight hours a day on the radio, talking and listening to fellow hobbyists in 40 states and many countries, including Canada, Japan and Sweden.

For several years he has also been a receiving center for traffic reports from other area ham operators. Several radio stations call him for the information daily, he said.

While he is eagerly awaiting a verification card from Titov after he returns to Earth, Gunnels said the contact with the cosmonaut is only the second-most thrilling contact he has made on the radio. The most exciting, he said, was when an operator made an emergency request asking how to do CPR on an accident victim.

“I called the paramedics and then told the man how to do CPR. The guy who was hurt pulled through and later even came to thank me in person. He wanted to give me $500, but I told him to use it for his kids’ college fund. “I don’t do this sort of thing for money. Ham radio keeps me alive. It has kept me going.”