Hi Dave,

Let me begin by saying that you should spend what ever time is necessary monitoring ISS passes and reading what ever is being relayed by ISS and do some independent research to have a basic (or better) understanding of what you are seeing, and what's going on with ISS before you start digipeating through ISS or using the BBS. Thorough and complete understanding of everything is not necessary but you should be able to identify an APRS digipeat from a BBS connect, etc. The best way to monitor this info is not with APRS mapping software. If the APRS mapping software has a terminal screen where you can just monitor the raw data, that would work for this purpose. A better choice would be a dumb terminal program. These programs have no features. They force you to learn the basic commands of your TNC (which are not all that difficult) and you will have a much better overall understanding of packet communications if you learn the most important TNC Commands.

That being said:

The key to success with ISS BBS is to practice with a terrestrial BBS first. If you have a TNC you can use your own BBS and practice sending short messages to it. I have notice that the published commands for the ISS BBS say that you should use the W command to start a message, but I have found that the end of message (/EX) does not end the message when using this command. W was tipically used to 'write' a file to terrestrial BBS's and not to begin a message, so I don't know where the error originated. To upload a message to the ISS BBS you should save the entire message in a short file such as NOTEPAD. For example: if I want to send a bulletin to all stations advising them that I am using the BBS and would appriciate replies I might write the followint text to a Notepad file.

SB ALL
HELLO
GREETINGS FROM GLADWIN MI EN73sx
REPLY VIA ISS BBS
73 STEVE K8BZ
/EX

Once you have this message saved in Notepad, wait for a satellite pass and connect to the BBS. There are tons of applications and terminal programs out there and it would be hard to show how to do it with each and every one, but if you simply use a dumb terminal program and work from the terminal screen and command prompt it would go as follows:

from the command prompt
cmd:c rs0iss-11 (to connect to the bbs)

when you are connected you will get something that looks like this from the BBS

*** CONNECTED to RS0ISS-11 [JAN 31 2012 06:45]
RS0ISS-11>K8BZ/V [JAN 31 2012 06:45]: <>:
Welcome to RS0ISS's message board
System Ver 1.50 112242 Bytes free

If you have MONITOR enabled in your tnc you may get lots of other unrelated packets back from ISS. You should do some independent research to learn what these packets are if you are monitoring them. If you don't it could be very confusing.

If you copy the above message from Notepad and paste it in your terminal program it will send the message to the BBS

SB ALL
HELLO
GREETINGS FROM GLADWIN MI EN73sx
REPLY VIA ISS BBS
73 STEVE K8BZ
/EX

The first line SB ALL is telling the BBS you are sending a bulletin to all stations. All stations are able to read it.
The next line is the subject of the message 'HELLO'
Everything between the HELLO and the /EX is the text of the message. The /EX is the command that ends the message and saves it to the BBS

If your message is successfully saved you will get this response:

Subject:
Message:
Thank you for your message.
CMD(F/K/M/R/W/B/H/?)>

Send the B (bye) command to disconnect from the BBS as soon as you are done.

Because you send the message from start to finish in one 'paste' operation you get the request for the Subject and Message text and the Thank you as well as the next input prompt all after the message was sent. If you were sending the same message by typing it live on a keyboard and waiting for the next prompt would would be asked for the Subject: after you sent the SB ALL; and you would be prompted for the Message: after you send HELLO for the subject. Then you would get the Thank You after you ended the message with the /EX. To upload a message to the BBS by typing it would not be effecient use of the satellite pass, unless you are a very good typist and had a lot of practice. The best practice is to compose your message before the pass and send it in a quick 'paste' operation.

Sending the message in one file is the quickest way to get in and out of the BBS.

I won't get in to other aspects now. After you have enought experience to understand what you are seeing in a terminal program, then you might quickly log in to the BBS read a message and then log out. Don't try to upload until you are fimiliar with the operation and can do it quickly. You will only have 10 minutes or less on a single pass and you should use the entire pass for BBS use. Other users will want some time.

If you can do all this quickly and efficiently, don't worry about complaints of tieing up the ISS BBS. BBS users have as much right as APRS users and you will actually be communicating with someone and not just putting an icon on an APRS map. Both BBS and APRS are appropriate uses and each should learn to use it efficiently as it's shared by all. You will have some mis-steps but we all do. Just hang in there and keep practicing and learning.

Once you are comfortable with the operation you shoud be able to be in and out of the BBS in nor more than a minute or two. Then you can read the mail or go to APRS for the rest of the pass, or what ever else pleases you.

73, Steve/k8bz