Rajkot students see ISS SSTV demonstration – credit Divyabhaskar
50 students in Rajkot, India enjoyed a live demonstration of Slow Scan Television (SSTV) from the International Space Station during a visible pass of the ISS.
Russian cosmonauts on the ISS transmitted amateur radio SSTV on 145.800 MHz FM from April 11-14.
AMSAT-INDIA Regional Coordinator West India Zone Rajesh Vagadia VU2EXP reports:
To spread awareness of Amateur Radio, Satellites & ARISS activities in the region we conducted interesting event recently.
On April 12, 2019 we openly invited students & citizen of Rajkot – Gujarat to be present & witness SSTV Live Demonstration, that too during Visible pass of ISS from terrace of my home.
More than 50 students & citizens assembled to my QTH by 18:30 IST (13:00z). We gave printed ISS tracking chart/ISS crew details to all of them, and explained how to use chart.
Myself Rajesh Vagadia VU2EXP gave brief talk on Amateur Radio, ISS, OSCAR Satellites, Life of Astronauts, ARISS SSTV event, Student Outreach Program etc for one hour. Small display of radio stuff were also kept. Everybody get excited to learn such new things (for them) happening in Ham Radio world.
Good Visible ISS Pass of -3.0 magnitude with elevation of 36° was targeted for Live Demo, calculated for my Grid ML52jh.
With my 3 ele Yagi, VHF HT & recording device we started to track ISS at 19:27 IST (13:57z). Within a minute ISS started to appear from NNW direction moving towards SE. Students were requested to control their excitement & to keep silence as we were also recording audio. Soon sstv signal also get heard on 145.800 MHz. SSTV signal for two images were received & recorded.
It was exciting experience for all to sighting ISS at the same time getting signals from it, felt like having handshake with ISS crew! After pass, we amplified weak audio in Audacity & decoded two images (though bit noisy) with MMSSTV. Decoded Images were shared with all students as souvenir. It proved great learning experience for all. Had lots of Q&A till late and enjoyed light refreshments at end of the program.
As everything was arranged at our home I need to thanks my XYL Kiran, harmonic Snehal VU3WHO, brother Prakash VU3PLJ & nephew Priyesh VU3GLY for extending helping hands.
Btw, leading newspaper Divyabhakshar supported this radio experiment & published good articles (though in regional language Gujarati), see
http://tinyurl.com/iss-sstv-demo-news
I am thankful to all hams and members of ARISS, AMSAT, ISS Crew, Space agencies, SSTV Award Manager etc involved in such a wonderful educational event offered to the world!
Pictures from Space via Ham Radio by M6DNT page 62 MagPi edition 80
https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/issues/80/
ISS SSTV useful info and links https://amsat-uk.org/beginners/iss-sstv/