ARISSat-1 Radio: FM Audio 2 & 3 days after deployment from the ISS - 08/05/11 & 08/06/11

At last ARISSat-1 is in orbit! On what have been my best two passes of this great sat, respectively only 2 and 3 days after the Russian cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Alexander Samokutiaev released it into orbit, I was able to receive its VHF voice and SSTV transmission (freq 145.950 FM) on two consecutive days as it passed over Arén, in Aragón (Spain). The very first word I heard from it was in Spanish: "Frecuencia"!
On the 08/05/11 pass audio it can clearly be sensed that the satellite apparently was rotating slowly (ARISSat-1 has no stabilization systems) as the signal strength increased, then decreased and increased again, in a cycle.
On 08/06/11 the pass had a fantastic 90 degrees elevation and this made the satellite sound particularly loud & clear in my modest setup. This setup was a book stand with an Icom IC-R5 scanner, a dipole "rabbit ears" TV antenna in a custom homemade mount, homemade antenna & audio connector adaptors, and for recording in a .wav format, for the second time, a Huawei U8110 smartphone with the Android 2.1 OS along with the RecForge Lite app.

To predict the passes, I used both Orbitron and the Heavens-Above webpage. As ARISSat-1 had been recently released from the ISS, I used the station's keps for the predictions with good results.

Despite receiving a good signal, specially in the second pass, I could not get good SSTV pictures out of the recordings (using MMSSTV), as it can be seen in the video, which also shows some pictures of ARISSat-1 inside and outside the ISS, and photos of my equipment taken during the passes of this great satellite.

UPDATE 08/20/11: At last I have three excellent SSTV images in my posession! Got them in the two last passes. I think I'm starting to master the art of SSTV!

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• ARISSat-1
• Radioskaf-V
• Radioskaf-B
• KEDR
• RS01S
• satellite
• ARISS
• AMSAT
• Amateur
• Ham
• Radio
• SSTV
• ISS
• International
• Space
• Station
• Shuttle
• Soyuz
• Progress
• ATV
• HTV
• NASA
• ESA
• JAXA
• Roscosmos
• spaceflight

[USNERDOC]

Very cool! Well done video.

73 / David / KF7ETX

[raptor22stealth]

@USNERDOC Thanks!

raptor22stealth :)

[themindbeats]

Con un par...¡¡¡ tiempo y dedicacion