[GCARC] ISS SSTV images from W2MMD satellite station

[Jonathan Pearce]

Over the past few days the Russian crew on the ISS has been broadcasting SSTV images throughout the orbits.  I set up the new software-defined radio setup at the W2MMD clubhouse to track and record those images since Thursday, and caught two passes there today. I pulled out the best downloads of each image and posted them to the Google Photo album linked below.  I also took a short video of one of the passes – you can see the SSTV signal on the SDR waterfall as the image materializes on the MMTV screen.   It’s all pretty cool – hope it’s interesting to a few people.

That station is largely operational, and it gets full-strength signals from horizon to horizon. We’ve had many SSB QSOs on the XW satellites and copied APRS packets from the APRS satellites as well as telemetry from the Fox and Funcube satellites. We’ve also downloaded weatherfax images from the NOAA satellites. We’re now working on getting 9600 bps telemetry decoded from Falconsat3, and once that’s working we want to get a 9600 bps uplink going as well. It would also be cool to get the 10 meter PSK uplink working although that would require an additional antenna.

Currently the best passes for the analog satellites are in the early evening (5-7 PM), and for the digital satellites are in the late morning. I’m going to try to be over there some evenings this week (except for Wednesday) and hopefully next Saturday AM. If anyone else is interested in working satellites let me know and we’ll arrange a time to be there together.

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPTu7rmBbkf57VasZ5oxYrvk1MZtExcNBogmGKeOiFC7BzIy7bl7oFHHbBRPjJiXg?key=UFZERHN0RVM2NEprTmIzcVA1b0pkUGpwcjdiMzBn

73 de Jon WB2MNF
Jon at pearce family dot org