Who is MAREX-NA

By Miles Mann, WF1F
MAREX-NA (Manned Amateur Radio Experiment, North American Division)

The club has been around since 1991, however the name has changed a few times over the years (MAREX -> MIREX -> MAREX-NA). It all began in 1991 when Dave Larsen (N6CO/N6JLH) and Miles Mann (WF1F) formed a club called MAREX (Mir Amateur Radio Experiment).

Original MAREX goals:

• Coordinate School schedules with the Russian Space Station Mir (first Mir school schedule took place in October 1991 Billerica Mass).
• Provide the Mir crews with live on orbit assistance with the SAFEX Amateur Radio Projects. And provide any additional training to the in-flight Mir crews as needed.
• Upgrade Mir Amateur Radio hardware as required.
• Train the public to use the Mir Personal Message System and encourage people world wide to be come interested in the abilities of Amateur Radio Satellite systems.

In 1994 Dave Larsen spear-headed a project to replace the existing Amateur Radio E-mail Modem (Terminal Node Controller TNC) on Mir. The original Pacom TNC had suffered a battery failure which caused frequent long down times. The new TNC was installed on Mir in 1995, this was the first MAREX project to go into Space.

In early 1996, the Energia Radio club, which manages all Amateur Radio projects on the Russian Space Station Mir, said they liked the name of our club (MAREX) and they wanted to use the name MAREX. So, we gave the Energia club the name MAREX or MAREX-RU. And we changed our name from MAREX to MIREX (Mir International Radio Experiment). The word International is more in keeping with the spirit of the club, we did not think of our selves as a "USA" only club. We wanted to help the world get affordable access to Amateur Radio Satellites.

In November 1996 MIREX was invited to the first Amateur Radio International Space Station meeting in Houston Texas. MIREX was instrumental in getting the representatives from Energia to come to Houston and sign some Amateur Radio cooperation agreements. Energia also took the lead in offering Antenna feed-through port access on the International Space Station for Amateur Radio projects. (4 antenna ports on the Service Module have been installed and additional antenna ports have been proposed by Energia for other modules).

One of the main goals of the first meeting was to form a coordinated management organization, called ARISS (Amateur Radio International Space Station). The goal of ARISS is to have one group coordinate all projects and manage all of the projects on ISS.

In May 1998 the MIREX club split into two clubs. The MIREX side with Dave Larsen still acts as QSL manager and provides most of the daily PMS system operator duties and supports Mir school schedules. The engineering side of MIREX formed a new group called MAREX-NA (Manned Amateur Radio Experiment, North American Division).

The MAREX-NA duties:

• School schedules and phone-patches with Mir and ISS (to date over 80 school schedules world wide have been completed).
• Provide Mir crew with live on orbit assistance with the Amateur Radio Projects on Mir and ISS.
• Upgrade Mir and ISS Amateur Radio hardware as required.
• Train the public to use the Mir Personal Message System and encourage people world wide to be come interested in the abilities of Amateur Radio Satellite systems
• Design and deliver new projects for Mir and ISS. The MAREX-NA engineering team has been responsible for designing and delivering (3) three projects to the Russian Space Station Mir.
  1. 1997 DCI Filter project. A special filter to allow the PMS to be functional while the Mir commercial transmitters were active. The SAREX and AMSAT-NA clubs both helped a great deal with this project. The SAREX team performed all of the flight safety certification testing, and documentation’s. The project was delivered to Mir in the Spring of 1997.
  2. 1997 Kantronics KPC-9612 Modem upgrade. A new modem with more memory and remote sysop control was installed on Mir and made active to the public on February 14, 1998. The SAREX team provided assistance in delivering the hardware to Russia for the September 1997 cargo rocket launch.
  3. 1998 SSTV: Our biggest project to date was the new Slow Scan TV system. The system uses off the shelf technology which was available at the design time. The off-the-shelf parts had to be engineered and integrated into a compatible stand alone package with extensive tests to insure safe and reliable performance. An innovative auto controller module which was designed/developed by Hank Cantrell (W4HTB), the controller handles the complex communications and timer functions. Four complete SSTV systems were built, three of the units were delivered to Russia in June 1998 by Miles Mann WF1F, who also trained the cosmonauts in the operations of the equipment shortly before they departed Earth for Mir. The MAREX-NA SSTV project was active on a part-time bases from December 1998 until August 1999. Over 2000 SSTV images have been sent from Mir to earth are showing up on web pages, TV and magazines around the world. See our web page for more details.

The Future of MAREX-NA:

The MAREX-NA team has submitted multiple Amateur Radio project proposal to ARISS for consideration for the International space Station. The MAREX SSTV project is just one of the projects which has been accepted by ARISS as a project for the ISS in the fall of 2001. For more information about future MAREX project, please read the section on ISS Projects on our MAREX web page.

MAREX philsophy:

• Keep it Simple
• Keep it Affordable to the public
• Keep it Educational
• And lets have some fun while we are learning about space and the world we live in

Partial list of MAREX-NA Engineering Staff

Miles Mann, WF1F	Chris Scott, WB9NEQ	Rebecca Harvey, N1GZD
Henry Cantrell, W4HTB	Boris Garber	Wayne Nakata, N1WPN
Don C. Miller, W9NTP	Farrell Winder, W8ZCF	Jim Barber, N7CXI
John Langner, W2OSZ	Jerry Muller, K0TV