If you head over to the Amateur Radio Newsline, you can read an article about how ham radio rebroadcast of a spaceshuttle mission was received on a video baby monitor used by a Chicago mother.

It was so interesting that I have copied and pasted the text here without permission:

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HAM RADIO IN SPACE: ME AND MY BABY - MONITOR - MYSTERY SOLVED

Ham radio is responsible for the NASA video seen over an Illinois mothers baby monitor during the recently concluded STS 117 space shuttle flight. Bill Pasternak, WA6ITF, reports:

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A radio club in Schaumburg, Illinois says it is likely responsible for the NASA spaceflight video over baby monitor. But it turns out that the signal seen only by suburban Chicago teacher Natalie Meilinger was not on 2.4 GHz as originally thought.

It happened this way. The club was re-transmitting STS 117 mission video on it’s 910.25 MHz amateur television repeater. The system runs 100 watts out into a par of horizontal yagis. These antennas are at 70 feet with one pointed north and the other to the west.

And it turns out that not all baby monitors operate on 2.4 GHz as everyone first thought. Some are in the 900 Mhz spectrum while others are dual band units. If you do the math it mean that a more than receivable signal could easily reach the Meilinger home and be displayed on the monitor receiver.

So why was no I-D noted by the Meilinger family? During the mission the transmitter had the call sign K9MOT displayed in the lower right corner of active video every 10 minutes - per FCC identification regulations. Any properly aligned video monitor like those used in Amateur Television stations would have displayed it because the I-D fell inside what broadcast engineers call the video safe zone. That’s the screen area you are supposed to see in off air television viewing.

But a baby monitor is not a broadcast quality monitor. In reality, most are low-end consumer products that tend to overscan the picture tube face. That’s fine for watching the kids at play but not for trying to see the whole picture. And that was likely the case with Natalie Meilinger’s baby monitor as well.

The K9MOT identifier was there, but the baby monitor had to much picture width. That put it out of the picture area her unit could display so she and anyone else looking at the monitor screen couldn’t see it.

Mystery solved thanks to some good sleuthing on the part of some Illinois hams.

For the Amateur Radio Newsline, I’m Bill Pasternak, WA6ITF, at the studio in Los Angeles.

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By the way, this is the 5th year the club has been re-broadcasting NASA video over its K9MOT repeater but only the first time to their knowledge that its been received by a non ham. (ARNewslineT with information provided by K1ATV and others)

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