Boy and Girl Scouts at Space Jam 4, under the stars in a grass field at the Rantoul IL airport made a direct contact with the ISS via the BSA Crew 272 WB9SA Sat/Comm station Aug. 8th at 4:12 CST. Doug Wheelock talked with the Scouts as the ISS flew overhead. Crew members ran the call and shot video of the contact and the ISS flaring over head.

Videos (part 1 and 2) can be seen at:
http://www.spacejamboree.com/multimedia.php
or on YouTube by searching "crew 272 ISS" as well as past year's ISS contact videos.

The Crew 272 Sat/Comm station was struck by Lightening a month before the contact, thanks to help from around the world, Dinesh at Fox Delta in India, SSB, M2, Kenwood, Yaseu all was fixed in time for the contact... though it was a bit stressful. Crew 272 Advisor, Brian K9BKW states "the ARISS team (Charlie AJ9N and Graham G7EVY) did a tremendous job mentoring us, and the call went down exactly as planned, possibly to the second..." Space Jam 5 will take place August 5-7th 2011, and will involve a major disaster drill (what fun!), and all the usual Ham Radio events, High Altitude balloons (and a blimp), APRS, ATV, Sat/Comm, and more...