Date

1 March 2024 11:15:14

Location

Munro Fox Lab, Royal Holloway University

Country or Territory

United Kingdom

Name

Sasha Engelmann

Satellite

NOAA-18

Radio Callsign

M6IOR

ID

ow242

My socks and shoes were already damp from weathering my morning commute to campus, and they got even wetter as I traipsed around the university grounds trying to find a good place for the satellite pass. The field to the back of Queens Building (where the Geography department is based) was virtually spongy with water. I decided to try to set up on a picnic table in the middle of two science laboratories. In full view of biological sciences researchers fiddling with pipets and samples through a bungalo window, I set up my ground station and hand-held the V-dipole. I was lucky that the first eight minutes were rain-free, but toward the end I had to lean my body over the laptop to protect it from drowning.

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