Episode XXIII: Canada's Telecommunications Hall of Fame Honours Humber College Students and Professor for Space Communications Project

The countdown to contact is at four days now, and I promise each and every one of you that we're going to be super-busy from now until then. With time quickly running out, there's a whole bunch of things going on not just for our immediate group, but for a number of other people.

For instance, the marketing department here at Humber College has started inviting the media to our contact. Humber's chief of security is busy making arrangements to handle the crowds. The engineer from Radio Humber and I are going to be meeting up a little later to discuss the logistics of broadcasting the contact live on our own radio station.
Our group, on the other hand, is testing, tweaking, re-testing, re-tweaking, and repeating as necessary. We've got a super-busy weekend ahead of us, clearing out the lab where we'll be actually making our contact from. After all, we'd like to fit as many people in there as possible.

I got an interesting email from Gino this morning. In it, a link to a press release from Canada's Telecommunications Hall of Fame. In short:

OTTAWA, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Jan. 28, 2009) - Canada's Telecommunications Hall of Fame announced today that it will pay tribute to Humber College students Paul Je, Patrick Neelin, Gino Cunti, and Kevin Luong and their professor, Mark Rector for their innovative NASA-approved satellite radiocommunication system to make voice radio contact with astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The Hall of Fame honours will take place at the 2009 Telecom Laureate Awards at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, October 29, 2009.

If you'll allow me to do so, I'd like to talk a little about the hall of fame.

I can't speak on the behalf of my teammates, but I think that having an organization dedicated to honouring Canadian achievements is an amazing idea. I've had many conversations with first- and second-semester students here at Humber, and one of the things that I stress is that the telecommunications industry is one of the most important industries in the world. In Canada alone, there are 15.6 million cellular phone subscribers. In 2005, roughly ten percent of Canada's non-cellular telephones were VOIP-based. It's predicted that by 2010, that figure will increase to ninety-five percent. The telecom industry is growing more rapidly than any industry in the world. 

Another example of how important the industry is: When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans back in 2005, one of the first things the military did was try to establish a communications link so that they could co-ordinate their efforts. In addition to that, amateur radio operators in the area played a critical role in getting information back and forth to the affected areas where the communications infrastructure was destroyed.

Canada's role in as a pioneer in the telecommunications industry, I feel, is often over-shadowed or taken for granted. Without the efforts of people like Guglielmo Marconi and Reginald Fessenden, the industry would be drastically different. If you do a little bit of research, you'll find a whole list of Canadian telecommunications advances. And yet, so many of these great feats are taken for granted.

That's why I believe that Canada's Telecommunications Hall of Fame is so important. There are a lot of of brilliant Canadians who have helped to shape the industry. They have, quite literally, changed the world forever. You hear about sports players being inducted into their various halls of fame, but let me tell you this: the people that Canada's Telecommunications Hall of Fame pays tribute to are heroes, and they deserve to be treated as such.

The hall of fame, I feel, celebrates Canada's achievements, and promotes the idea that not all of our heroes are from the past. We could talk at length about people like Marconi and Fessenden, but who knows that the future holds? The Hall promotes that idea, and inspires students to work to their full potential. It honours the professors that teach students. All in all, Canada's Telecommunications Hall of Fame is doing a whole lot of good. Not just for Canada, but for people all around the world. I am honoured to be recognized by such an influential organization.

Episode XXII: Date confirmed!

Holy crap, our contact is coming up quick! We got official notification on Friday that our contact is going to take place on February 2, 2009 at 12:29 pm (Eastern Standard Time).

With only one week left, we have a lot of testing and re-testing to do. We know that everything is going to work, but it's just a matter of confirming that everything is going to perform the way it's supposed to.

There's a buzz circulating around the school. An excitement in the air, even. This is it. This is what we've been working so hard for. It's right there in our grasp! If you think Gino and Paul look happy in this photo, you haven't seen anything yet.

Episode XXI: Almost Game Time

I think that one of my biggest regrets about this project is the fact that I haven't been keeping up this blog as often as I had hoped to. It's almost game day, and we have accomplished a whole lot so far. Looking back at this blog, though, I realize that it's hard to really get an accurate picture of each little thing we've been through. I feel I must apologize for this.

You can sleep easy, though, knowing that while this blog hasn't been updated all that much, we've still been extremely busy. The good folks on the ISS have been playing around with their radio setup, and that's caused us a few little problems in our testing. We've managed to work around it, though, and get all our testing done. An example of our final push: the last couple of nights, we've haven't left school until 10 or 11 o'clock at night.

I suppose at this point, it goes beyond testing. We're not just testing; we're rehearsing. We're all going to have a role to play, and we're going to make sure that come contact day, everything goes smoothly.

As I'm sure you've noticed, we're holding a contest here. In a nutshell, we want you to suggest some questions! Given the chance, what would you ask the brave men and women on the space station? On our home page, we've got a link at the top of the page. Click on that link, and fill out our easy form. Almost instantly, we'll get an email with your question. We're going to choose a few winners to come to our contact live and ask the questions themselves. Pretty darn exciting, eh?

In any event, expect to hear a lot more from us in the coming weeks. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to be making some history!

In the meantime, though, enjoy these pictures taken by Debby Walker from Humber, Etc. Thanks Debby!

 Kevin, Gino, and I working hard on our HCB Tracker.

Paul getting ready to work hard.

I'm not sure what we're panicking over, but I'm sure it's nothing!