Posts by Dave Honess

Spotted the ISS in the sky yet? How about pulling out some spare kit and giving it a listen?

Re: Slow scan TV through Internet?

Yeah totally right about it being about receiving something directly from the ISS. You can actually claim a certificate from ariss.pzk.org.pl/sstv/ after having received even a bad picture with only a few clear lines in it. Something which I think is really great for the young ones.

But I agree that the Web SDR does dilute it - it's much more fun with your own ground station - but we wanted people to be able to participate as easily as possible (especially considering COVID times). I hope people will progress onto that way of doing it if they enjoy via Web SDR.

Re: Not where I live

This is precisely the beauty of using a Web SDR. You're using a receiver in a remote location and, with Goonhilly for example, you can get 90 degree overhead passes at its location. Make sure you put the Web SDR location into heavens-above.com

Re: Slow scan TV through Internet?

Hmm, I get your point. But by using a Web SDR we are potentially including many more people in the activity who would otherwise never even know about it. Some people don't have space to, or can't afford to, set up a proper receiver with a deployed antenna. The videos do explain the SSTV tones concept, the orbit of the ISS and Doppler shift. So there is a lot of opportunity for learning there.

In fact I actually have a Python script which will do the Doppler tuning of the Web SDR. However for beginners we have been suggesting to increase the filter bandwidth to accommodate the drift or use the allow keyboard function and use the cursor keys to manually track the centre of the transmission as the ISS flies over.

Ah yes, if you do not see Stereo Mix come up under the Control Panel > Sound > Recording tab then I suggest to use Virtual Audio Cable. You can basically follow the video for Windows 7 to get it installed.

Re: I watched the Win7 tutorial

Re the Mac OS video. We used Soundflower because it's free and doesn't capture any personal information from you. It's also reccomended on the Web SDR faq page: www.websdr.org/faq.html (see the question about decoding digital modes). There are a couple of alternatives though, if the install process is too complicated, have a look at Blackhole and Loopback.

Re: I watched the Win7 tutorial

The PD 120 to ML240 mode switch was automatic, well spotted though, after the soundcloud test audio finishes playing it starts automatically playing some other piece of music. The auto-detect feature of RX-SSTV then, for some reason, thought that image mode was being used. When you use Virtual Audio Cable you don't actually hear the audio playback from your speakers or headphones so it's easy to miss things like that.

Regarding the images, the ISS does not transmit SSTV all the time, they post the times when it will transmit on this website: ariss-sstv.blogspot.com

Currently there hasn't been an event since January. We were hoping for one this week but because of the COVID situation in Russia they may not be able to get on console to upload the images.

Re: Rats

I checked with the folks who operate the Goonhilly Web SDR and that one should be able to take it.