From Ken Dorsey KA8OAD
Starting on December 26th at 18:25 UTC the ISS will be running another special SSTV event.The ARISS Slow Scan TV (SSTV) event. The event is scheduled to run until December 31 ending at 17:05 UTC. Dates and times are subject to change so it’s best to listen for them on any close passes.
The images are downlinked on 145.8 MHz +/- 3 KHz Doppler shift with the expected SSTV mode of PD 120. The main theme of this year’s event will be “Lunar Exploration” so expect some interesting and informative pictures.
You don’t need a full blown satellite station to participate in this event and I know operators who have used nothing more than a VHF HT on a good outdoor antenna to receive the pictures. Personally I use an IC-9100 connected to an omnidirectional vertical ground plane antenna. I use Orbitron software interfaced with the radio to set the VFO for the proper doppler shift but this isn’t really necessary. Using a setup like this is not optimum, you won’t receive the ISS if it’s below about 30 degrees, but you will be able to receive higher passes well. Here are a couple of the pictures I received during last year’s event which commemorated sending the first artificial satellite, the Russian Sputnik, into earth orbit (the “noise” at the very end of the first picture appeared because the ISS was beginning to drop too low to receive well):
The software required to receive the SSTV images:
MMSSTV or the SSTV software of your choice (MMSSTV will accept microphone input from the PC, however I use a direct audio connection)
To track the ISS (so you know when to listen for it):
ORBITRON
SATPC32
SATPC32ISS (same as SATPC32 but setup to only track the ISS)
All 3 tracking programs allow full control of your radios VFO if your radio is interfaced to your PC
If you receive at least one of the pictures and post it to the ARISS SSTV Gallery https://www.spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/ you will be eligible for a nice “printable” award certificate that will be available for downloading. Here is my certificate from last year’s event:
