Hey, Jim:
  One last note to cap off this thread for now, for you and any others who 
may be following it.  Last night I heard American Astronaut John Blaha on the 
same Ham freq (145.2) on which I heard the Mir Commander Valerie Korzun the 
previous night.  It was at 0600 UTC, same exact time as the night before (I 
realize that's an hour after midnight for East Coast folks, but any 
interested monitors can always leave a tape recorder hooked to their radio, 
especially one with a voice-activated record feature, since there's so little 
other traffic at that hour).  Blaha was talking about the mission, and how 
he'll be on the Mir till around at least Jan 18, after which there's supposed 
to be another Shuttle going up for a docking with Mir.
  As with the night before, I found that I was able to hear the transmission 
for only a brief time (maybe two minutes last night and around half a minute 
the night before).  I don't know if they were only on the air briefly or if 
they were getting too far out of range to be heard (though the satellite 
tracking program showed them to still be well within the "circle of 
visibility" even though they were on their way out of it).  Also, Blaha did 
mention that he had just woke up and (if I heard him correctly) they tend to 
be on the air a little bit just before bedtime and right after waking up.  
So, that would seem to make "prime time" around 0600 UTC and maybe 2200-2400 
UTC (depending on how much sleep they get).
  Lastly, this whole thing of satellite monitoring has been quite new (and 
fun) to me, and it was pretty much prompted by your original post, which led 
me to review and detail the satellite tracking program and the AMSAT data 
I've mentioned.  So, thanks!  And a happy holiday season to you and yours!
Cheers, Frank
... I am WD-40 of Borg.  Resistance is minimal.
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