Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 25, 1992                   TAG: 9203250123
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BOB SUTER NEWSDAY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

AMATEURS HAMMING IT UP WITH ORBITING COSMONAUTS

He realized that these foreigners were a lot farther at sea than he had thought: They were cosmonauts orbiting the earth on board the space station MIR.

"This is Karl," Kurz, a high school teacher, broadcast in November, "in Machias, Maine," a coastal town off the Bay of Fundy. To his astonishment, moments later came a very clear response in English, "This is U5MIR. Good afternoon Karl. My name Sergei."

Using a small hand-held transmitter with a mere 7-watt transmission output, Kurz had reached Sergei Krikalev, part of the MIR crew and the cosmonaut who was stuck aloft while his country disintegrated. After a few exchanges about the location and strength of their respective signals, Krikalev's transmission began to fade and he signed off with a traditional do svidaniya (goodbye).

Kurz was one of the legion of amateur radio enthusiasts across the world who buoyed the spirits of the MIR crew during their long hours in the space orbiter.

Conversations between space travelers and ham radio operators are not new. Since 1983, various American space shuttle crew members have communicated with earthbound ham radio operators under the auspices of a program called the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment, or SAREX. Through SAREX thousands of radio amateurs and schoolchildren in the United States, Australia and Brazil have vicariously experienced life in space.

Unlike the highly structured SAREX program, communications with the orbiting cosmonauts have been considerably more casual - and, in that sense, have succeeded in fulfilling the expectations of the Russian space planners who placed a special radio onboard MIR four years ago. Unlike U.S. space shuttle missions, which seldom last more than a week, tours of several months have been common for the rotating crews of MIR.

Regular radio contact has been particularly helpful for Krikalev, who was launched last May 18, before political turmoil at home disrupted his mission.

Originally scheduled to return to earth in October, Krikalev has remained aloft several more months because of disagreements among the three former Soviet states now running the space program. As funding for the enormous former-Soviet space program became increasingly uncertain, rockets, space capsules and other items were put up for sale at bargain-basement prices in hopes of raising cash.

Krikalev is reported to have inquired half-seriously at one point during a televised interview from MIR, "Is it true they plan to sell the MIR . . . with us on board?"

In recent news reports, Krikalev has been jokingly referred to as the "Rip Van Winkle" cosmonaut, recalling the Washington Irving character who awoke to a vastly different world after a 20-year nap. Some more sensational accounts, as recent as last month, ran beneath headlines like: LOST IN SPACE, suggesting panicky cosmonauts uncertain of their future.

Hams like Kurz have known for some time that this was never the case: "When I first talked to him, I didn't believe that he was out in space. I didn't hear any hint of emotional breakdown or anything. I didn't have any sense that they felt they were lost in space. "

Like many hams, Kurz monitors the cosmonauts' frequency even when not attempting to contact them, and he hears them speaking to many different hams. He notes that they have very distinct voices; and judging by the number of different exchanges being heard with voices he does not recognize, the cosmonauts are logging a lot of time on the air greeting whoever is lucky enough to reach them.

William Yoreo, of West Hartford, Conn., may well be one of those voices. He has logged several conversations with Krikalev over several months. A 30-year ham operator, Yoreo is in charge of data processing and communication for the American School for the Deaf.

"We talked several times about how long he's [Krikalev] been up there. . . . He seemed positive, but there was a certain mundaneness to the life at this point. There was kind of that sense that it will be nice to get out of here," Yoreo said.