Tag Archives: HamTV

Equipment Test on the ISS

September 27th, 2017

Tonight ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli, IZ0JPA, aboard the International Space Station tested the amateur radio equipment in the Columbus Module.

Signal quality was better than expected, as it was a pass with quite low culmination at 48° elevation only. He could be heard well on 145.8 MHz FM as well.

Groundtrack of the ISS

The following pass at 20:44 UTC was more convenient and culminated at 62° elevation in the north. But Paolo could only be seen in the very first seconds, before he switched HamTV to blank transmission.

Reception of Live Video from Space: Thomas Pesquet, FX0ISS

February 13th, 2017

Today another ARISS contact has been established between Thomas Pesquet, FX0ISS aboard the Intenational Space Station and Collège André Malraux, Chatelaillon-Plage, France. As expected, the onboard DATV transmitter (HamTV) was in operation.

Blank transmissions have been received earlier, but today I could receive the TV pictures for my very first time. There was a lot of fading, but I managed to record a couple of sequences.

As the pass went overhead, I lost the signal, when the ISS approached the zenith, because the rotor had to turn 180° and it is too slow to catch up the bird again (full length video here best quality from 2:50 to 4:50).

The frequency used was 2.395 GHz. The equipment installed for reception is a 3 m dish with linear polarisation, a Kuhne MKU LNC 23 converter and a TT S2-3200 DVB-S receiver card in my PC with Tutioune3200 DVB-S software by F6DZP.