I am big fan of the youtube channel ‘save it for parts’ – Gabe is a really interesting person who is honest and clear in his approach to what ever comes into his hands – I mention his channel as it was a single comment on on one of his videos that made me aware that the ISS was doing SSTV ! Something I had always wanted to do but never had the chance / setup to make it happen.

Withat that I setup MMSSTV to use the IC9700 audio source and tuned HRD to the ISS SSTV radio frequency.

It was really exciting to wait for the ISS to come over and hear SSTV coming down, the quality of my images varied greatly, but I was nethertheless happy to receive pictures direct as the ISS flew over the QTH in IO90BS. On a good run I could get one good picture and then one not so good picture, but the main thing was to take part.

The ARISS organisation had setup an excellent page where images could be submitted and a reward received. The main page here showed the excellent pictures received around the world, the quality is quite amazing – whilst mine didnt make the main page, I was happy that it was possible to see my submissions searching on the call sign.

And sure enough I was soon awarded the ISS SSTV which I’ve already put on my QRZ page.

At the same time I noticed on the AMSAT Oscar Sat status page another SSTV satellite (and packet) – SONATE-2. I setup HRD for the satellite and amazingly i was able to get an image as it flew over !

I was really pleased that my ‘generic’ egg-beater setup was able to pull in such weak signals and for them to be decoded. SONATE-2 also does APRS – its not far off the frequency for the ISS, so with checking hte fly-by schedules, I setup my packet radio application to receive, sure enough I received a packet from SONATE-2 !

I had a fantastic time, thanks to the save it for parts channel mentioning the ISS was doing SSTV and getting so many great images. This is my favourite !

I hope I can get more SSTV from both the ISS and SONATE-2 – its really inspired me to do something with SSTV myself, given now that intermediate license holders can setup a low-power SSTV repeater, it just might be something I do ! 🙂

Until the next blog posting – lets hope the weather gets better – and more amateur radio shenanigans ! 🙂