Receiving SSTV images from the ISS – ARISS 20th Anniversary

In commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of ARISS, a Slow Scan Television (SSTV) event took place between the evening of Thursday 20th July until the morning of Monday 24th July. The International Space Station (Russian Segment) was transmitting a sequence of SSTV images showing the history of ARISS on a downlink frequency of 145.800MHz in FM mode and PD120 SSTV mode.

I started receiving them on the Friday, just for fun, but then thought it would be great to collect all 12 images, thinking at the time it might not be possible. However, over the three days, I did actually manage to receive all 12 images. Some I managed to get a few times, giving the choice of multiple images to pick from, others only the one, but I did end up with all of them. 6 of the 12 images I managed to get with no noise, the other 6 are with varying amounts of noise. Read more to see the images.

Below are the 12 images that I received, which I am very happy about! All of these were received with my Diamond X-50 2m/70cm antenna on the roof. Sometimes with the direct overhead passes, you get some nulls and phase cancellations going on, which can be seen on images that are near perfect, but with a sharp line or two of noise through them. The ISS was S9 signal at times. Images early in the morning seemed better with less noise on 145MHz.

Image 1 of 12 - Received 24/07/2017 0005 BST

Image 1 of 12 – Received 24/07/2017 0005 BST

Image 2 of 12 - Received 22/07/2017 0324 BST

Image 2 of 12 – Received 22/07/2017 0324 BST

Image 3 of 12 - Received 22/07/2017 0144 BST

Image 3 of 12 – Received 22/07/2017 0144 BST

Image 4 of 12 - Received 22/07/2017 0007 BST

Image 4 of 12 – Received 22/07/2017 0007 BST

Image 5 of 12 - Received 22/07/2017 0011 BST

Image 5 of 12 – Received 22/07/2017 0011 BST

Image 6 of 12 - Received 23/07/2017 0051 BST

Image 6 of 12 – Received 23/07/2017 0051 BST

Image 7 of 12 - Received 23/07/2017 0056 BST

Image 7 of 12 – Received 23/07/2017 0056 BST

Image 8 of 12 - Received 22/07/2017 2318 BST

Image 8 of 12 – Received 22/07/2017 2318 BST

Image 9 of 12 - Received 24/07/2017 0449 BST

Image 9 of 12 – Received 24/07/2017 0449 BST

Image 10 of 12 - Received 24/07/2017 0313 BST

Image 10 of 12 – Received 24/07/2017 0313 BST

Image 11 of 12 - Received 24/07/2017 0317 BST

Image 11 of 12 – Received 24/07/2017 0317 BST

Image 12 of 12 - Received 24/07/2017 0141 BST

Image 12 of 12 – Received 24/07/2017 0141 BST

I really enjoyed the challenge of trying to receive them all and I’m glad I did, although only just! Thanks ARISS 🙂

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