I’ve dabbled with Slow Scan before, but it’s not something that’s ever really captured my imagination.
However, when I saw that the ISS was going to be transmitting SSTV round the clock for seven days, as part of an experiment in conjunction with ARISS, it piqued my interest… almost anything to do with the ISS tends to make me sit up and take notice.
And so, armed with the latest orbital information from Heavens Above and a visual representation of the station’s position from N2YO, I set about trying to successfully capture some images from the ISS.
The option with the least amount of kerfuffle was to connect my SDRPlay to my X-200 colinear and then install a Virtual Audio Cable to feed the output from SDRUno into an SSTV decoder… RX-SSTV is my preferred piece of software for this task, as I have no desire to ever transmit SSTV.
OK, setting up the VAC was a little troublesome but I got there.
Actually decoding the images proved to be far less successful, with lots of noise giving me only partially decoded images.
On the umpteenth attempt though, I set everything up and just left it running whilst I took the dog out, fully expecting yet another only semi-successful attempt. Upon my return though, I was rewarded with the following image: 100% copy!
The ISS was passing over Germany when this image was received. If I have my Pythagoras right, that’s a distance of about 450 miles.
As someone pointed out to me, it is – of course – Line Of Sight, but even so, I think that’s not bad for 2m FM into a white stick on the side of the house!
And I did pick it up briefly, loud and clear for just a few seconds, as it passed over Budapest yesterday. Pythagoras tells me that’s about 960 miles!
As requested by ARISS, I submitted my image to them and I was rewarded with my first ever Amateur Radio Award – that’s it in the pic at the top.
Slow Scan still hasn’t captured my imagination, but it was a bit of fun.