2E0SQL - M3PHP » iss

Arissat-1 Launched

Peter — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 10:45:41 +0000

On the 3^th of August during a Russian EVA on the International Space Station the new Arissat-1 satellite was launched after many delays. During the EVA there were problems too with the suspected missing UHF antenna, although people have since been able to use the SSB Transponder so something must be attached.

I decided to stay up late, to decode the first signal over the United Kingdom. This happened at 3am on the 4th August, when I heard the Voice and then SSTV images on 145.950

The signal wasn’t strong at only 5 degrees elevation but managed to decode an SSTV image, but as you can see plenty fading every couple of seconds. But a couple of hours later I managed to get a slightly better quality image from one of the onboard cameras!

Arissat-1 Audio (mp3)

I’ve yet to have an SSB contact via it but hoping that might be possible next week during a non Eclipse pass, and will report if/when that happens.

ISS Packet & SO-67

Peter — Tue, 17 May 2011 08:51:11 +0000

Since being back from the Isle of Arran I’ve been doing a lot of APRS via the ISS, we used APRS while traveling and it was a useful tool for knowing where everyone was and I’ve sort of become hooked just wish there was more activity on 144.800 in the Oxfordshire area anyone? what I’ve done though is ordered a Foxdelta Tracker which will hopefully arrive soon and I’ll be able to use that while out and about walking/cycling will post more about that once it arrives.

APRS RX iGate used on the Ferry to Arran

Anyways so I’ve been doing APRS using the ICOM IC-910H and the AGW Packet Engine plus an external creative usb sound-card, at first it didn’t work too well but after tweaking the audio settings it started decoding and now works on every pass! for decoding and receiving packets I’ve been using UISS the program is simple and works well with the AGW Packet Engine DDE interface so that suites me fine!

Below are two screenshots of packets received some stations on Sunday

I’ve also had my first contacts on the African SO-67 satellite, normally I miss when then the satellites been turned on over Europe but this time I’ve been on the ball so far worked 9A2EY, UR5BFX, SQ9JYL, F0FVK, I’m impressed by the signal strength of the satellite too far better then any of the other FM satellites I’ve heard!

12:00 UTC ISS (OR4ISS) Pass Failed QSO with SP7POS

Peter — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 17:37:52 +0000

Due to the fact SP7POS was due to have a sheduled QSO with OR4ISS this lunch time I thought, I decided to have a listen sadly the QSO attempt failed but managed to record most of the pass.

Audio File for OR4ISS calling SP7POS

ISS APRS Packet 12:38 Pass!

Peter — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 13:23:35 +0000

Today I finally managed to get some APRS packets through the ISS, this was helped somewhat by Dad (M3JFM) hand steering the Sota 2m 3 element beam and me shouting the odd direction.

Equipment

Yaesu FT-817
Sota Beam 3 Elements
Signalink USB
Software: AGW Packet Engine, UISS & UIView

UI-View Screenshot

Raw Packets

The most important one is the RS0ISS* which is the retransmitted packet.

Fm 2E0SQL To CQ Via ARISS,RS0ISS-4 [12:43:04]
=5145.23N/00114.45W-Hello from Oxford {UIV23}

Fm 2E0SQL To CQ Via ARISS [12:43:24]
=5146.15N/00112.30W-Peter, Oxford {UISS52}

Fm 2E0SQL To CQ Via RS0ISS-4* [12:43:26]
=5146.15N/00112.30W-Peter, Oxford {UISS52}

Findu

ISS Voice & SSTV

Peter — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 18:03:29 +0000

Today turned out to be rather interesting, upon getting up Dad (M3JFM) informed me that there was a ISS pass at around 11:30 UTC, so armed with my Olympus DM-20 digital voice recorder I headed into the shack to record the pass using the FT-7800 and V2000 vertical again. I took the audio out of the speaker jack and put it right into the recorder and left it to record what ever it received

Mean while Dad set out to listen for the ISS using his VX150 handheld and a SOTA 2m 3el beam, to our surprise this time it wasn’t transmitting SSTV but was being manned by one the guys on board! perhaps if I knew before hand I might have tried to get a QSO!

The audio file will be here soon!

After about 6 minutes the pass was over but we had a blast receiving We then caught a later pass around at around 13:48 this time round it was SSTV so after the audio was recorded we fed the audio back into Dads laptop and using HRDs DM780 SSTV decoder we got the following two pictures.

ISS Talks to Budbrooke Primary School

Peter — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:42:21 +0000

Earlier today the International Space Station, had an arranged contact with the Budbrooke Primary School in Warwick. I was lucky enough to be able to hear the ISS on 145.800 for most of the pass using the FT7800 and a V2000 vertical.

You can listen to the audio file ISS%20Edited.mp3 I have removed all the excess noise too, the next thing I’m wanting to do is receive the SSTV picture hopefully tomorrow if I’m lucky!