Category: Satellite Operations

International Space Station NA1ISS contact with GB4YOTA

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On Tuesday 8th August, there was a planned contact between the ISS and YOTA at 1837 UTC, so I decided to have a listen. There was an issue with the ISS VHF downlink during this pass, so the contact was rescheduled to the next pass, at 2015 UTC. You can hear Paolo IZØJPA apologise for the technical issues they had on the first pass at the beginning of the contact.

I was lucky enough to be able to hear both GB4YOTA and NA1ISS from my location, as the YOTA station was operating from Gilwell Park, which is only 18km NW from my location. The video below shows my reception of the contact. Antenna was a Diamond X-50 on the house, into an Icom IC-7100.

Receiving SSTV images from the ISS – ARISS 20th Anniversary

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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. (more…)

Echo – AO51 Apollo 11 anniversary SSTV image and audio

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On July 20th 2009, AMSAT marked the 40th anniversary of the linar landing, by transmitting a looped audio and SSTV image. Here is the audio and SSTV image I recieved from AO51 satellite, 435.300MHz on 20th July 2009. 1729 GMT.

SSTV Image received Robot 36 format.


Press PLAY above, to hear the audio I received with an FT-817ND and homemade 7 element handheld yagi 435.300MHz

This is my homemade beam for receiving AO51. Wooden boom with bicycle spoke directors/reflector and a coathanger as a driven element! 4:1 coax balun. AO51 is a signal 7 on a good pass with the FT-817ND.

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