After spending several weeks both monitoring and trying to work Col. Doug Wheelock, I have reached a conclusion that may be helpful to folks who are having trouble establishing contact with NA1SS. Namely, Col. Wheelock seems to latch on to calling stations more frequently when they include their location as opposed to simply giving their callsign only.

Over a period of several weeks, I had called several times (without success) using this basic format: "November Alpha One Sierra Sierra, this is Alpha Lima Zero India, Alpha Lima Zero India, over." After reviewing my recordings and those of others on this site, I noticed that Col. Wheelock seemed to be unable to copy full callsigns on initial calls, but he frequently seemed to hear a city and/or state/country that some stations were giving, and he would indicate that geographic name rather than a callsign or part of a callsign when he responded

After noticing this, I changed my calling format to the following: "NA1SS, this is Alpha Lima Zero India, Alpha Lima Zero India in Boone, North Carolina, over." The first pass where I started to use this format, he came back to me on my second call. So you might give this calling format a try if you haven't already.

Alain, I would have posted this in your ELK antenna thread, but I didn't want to derail it.

It would be interesting to know how many stations are indicating their location in addition to their callsign when they call the ISS.