Results of ISS SSTV Activity 04/10/2020 – 08/10/2020

3 October – 8 October 2020 saw the broadcasting of SSTV images from the International Space Station, the Club had primed its members by:

1. Preparing pass predictions for the duration based on the Clubhouse location;
2. Announcing the planned activity periods through its on-line News Posts and via:
• The Clubs News Post RSS feed linked to the Clubs public and private members Groups.io mailing list;
• The Clubs FACEBOOK page;
• The Clubs LINKEDIN page; and
• The Clubs TWITTER feed.
3. Placing timed TWEETS in Clubs TWITTER feed to announce the imminent visibility of the ISS (although some of these failed to send); and
4. Updating the Groups.io thread in the private Members only mailing list with “live” results as people sent images

The Clubs original News Post also contained links to:

• The AMSAT guide to receiving SSTV from the ISS using home equipment;
• AN ESA video guide to receiving images from the ISS using the Goonhilly Web SDR; and
• Links to suitable software for Windows, OSX, Linux (inc Raspbian), Android and iOS.

The pass prediction table looked like this:

Table of ISS Passes

Novers Park Community Association, Rear of 124 Novers Park Road, Bristol, BS4 1RN

Latitude (degrees N-S where North is +ve): 51.425400°
Longitude (degrees E-W where East is +ve): -2.593882°
IARU (Maidenhead) Locator: IO81qk
Elevation (metres Above Ordnance Datum AoD): 64m

Notes:

In the table below:

1. Table Entries with no background colour indicate passes where: 0° < Maximum Elevation ≤ 30°
2. Table Entries with a yellow background indicate passes where: 30° < Maximum Elevation ≤ 45°
3. Table Entries with a green background indicate passes where: 45° < Maximum Elevation ≤ 90°
4. Azimuth or Bearings are measured in degrees clockwise from North

There were a number of interruptions to the broadcasts, due to operational schedules on the ISS. Notably there were very few broadcasts on 5 October when the delayed resupply mission was docking at the space station. The broadcasts started early, on 3 October, because of the rescheduling of the resupply mission, and there were some transmission stoppages on the 7th coupled with an early finish on 8 October.

Below are some “warts and all” examples of the images received by members of the Club, if any members have not submitted their images and would like to do so please send them to the e-mail address at the bottom of the page.

Kevin M7AWX has made available a couple of audio recordings of his received images, if you would like to hear what SSTV sounds like or even try an off-line decode then .MP3 and .WAV versions of these audio recordings can be downloaded from our Public DropBox folder at: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/i8jdu3xmmcagcir/AAAUHj3GC4qtxYfb693ui2G5a?dl=0.

Most SSTV programs have an option to decode from audio files rather than a direct audio input and if you want to try in the future but don’t have the capability to connect your rig to a PC or tablet this can be a viable way of receiving images using a ‘phone or a digital recorder to capture the tones for decoding after the pass.

There were 12 images in the set this time, focussing on space exploration, satellites and the creators of space hardware.

The Received Images

Image 1/12

Image 2/12

Image 3/12

Image 4/12

Image 5/12

Image 6/12

Image 7/12

Image 8/12

Image 9/12

Image 10/12

Image 11/12

Image 12/12

If there is another scheduled SSTV activity period it will be published on the Club website. It would be nice to get all 12 cards from an activity period at some point.

Copies of all of the images received by various Amateurs and SWLs around the world have been uploaded to the ARISS Gallery.