ARISS 20th Anniversary SSTV

This weekend has seen another SSTV event from the International Space Station, this time in commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of ARISS (Amateur Radio on the International Space Station)

The 20 year history of ARISS was displayed through a collection of 12 images highlighting the accomplishments of the project over the last two decades.

As the ISS has orbited the world it has been transmitting the SSTV signals using FM on the usual downlink of 145.800 MHz, here at my QTH in the UK the passes have occurred late at night into the early morning, averaging 3 - 4 reasonable passes each day.

The signal has been very strong and so some excellent low noise images have been received by many people using just modest equipment. While not the greatest technical achievement in the world it nonetheless generates much needed interest in ARISS and amateur space communication.

My own system consisted of the Yaesu FT-857D and MMSSTV running on the shack PC and was left on automatic receive (I was tucked up in bed) and managed to get decent copies of all the images.

Image 8 reminded me of the fun I had back in 2011-2012 of receiving the ARRISAT-1 and was one of the key things that convinced me to finally get off my backside and actually get licensed, even if it took me another 12 months and to this day haven't really cracked satellites myself! My previous blog posts on that can be found at http://nerdsville.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/arissat-1

Here are the best of my images, for a full description of what each one depicts visit http://ariss-sstv.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/anniversary-image-descriptions.html

Sending Christmas Greetings to the ISS

There was much media coverage in the UK of the "Santa pass" (Telegraph, Daily Mail) The International Space Station passed over the UK in the late afternoon and early evening on Christmas Eve and around 17:20GMT promised an especially bright display in the dark skies. So imaginatively we were asked to observe and imagine that the bright moving point of light was actually Santa off delivering his presents.

As luck would have much of the UK had a crystal clear sky and I even managed to get my 80 plus year old Mother-in-law out in the garden to watch the spectacle. She was impressed and it was great to overhear lots of excited children coming out in the nearby homes to watch Santa as he flew overhead.

Back in October 2013 after becoming a newly licensed radio amateur I managed to send APRS packets to the International Space Station which were digipeated and received back on earth by other operators. Back then I used a lowly Baofeng UV5R handheld and I decided to repeat the exercise this time using the FT857D (this time running around 20W) to talk to Santa!

The computer I used back then has been decommissioned so on the laptop I installed the UISS program from ON6MU which makes easy work of APRS to the ISS and instead of the cumbersome AGWPE I used the excellent soundcard modem from UZ7HO.

I attempted to send a message on the pass at 15:43 but failed completely, discovering I'd got my soundcard incorrectly set up. I corrected this and left the autobeacon mode running in UISS during the Santa pass and checking back much later could clearly see I'd sent and had a message repeated back from the ISS.

Checking the ariss website (www.ariss.net) I could see the repeated message had been received by another station and my position was showing up on the map (M0NRD)

I have successfully done it again today on Christmas Day! As the raw packets below confirm.

M0NRD>CQ,RS0ISS*,qAR,DM2RM:73' Happy Christmas from Andrew IO93OB
M0NRD>CQ,RS0ISS*,qAR,MB7USS:=5304.08N/00048.47W-73' Happy Christmas from Andrew
M0NRD>CQ,RS0ISS*,qAR,HG8GL-6:73' Happy Christmas from Andrew IO93OB

It was a nice achievement and another nice Christmas present was achieved early this morning while running WSPR on 40m, managing to get received in New Zealand

Anyway enjoy the rest of the festive season and I wish you all the best in 2015

Another Day Another Arduino Project

Yes another day, another Arduino project (seriously this is a great development environment)

As I mentioned in passing yesterday I have a number of Arduino based projects buzzing around in my head. One of them is to produce a satellite antenna pointer/indicator.

I have used an Android AR tracking solution before (flaky at best) and can see the relevant information in Orbitron or SatPC32 to know where to point the antenna but it is difficult to see a PC screen when stuck out in the middle of the lawn!

My idea is this, I will make a large tripod to which I can attach appropriate antenna as I need, then during the satellite pass it has indicators to show where to point the antenna manually.

I envisage the azimuth indicator to be a large horizontal circle with 36 LEDs positioned at 10 degree intervals, the elevation will be a quarter circle with 20 LEDs positioned at 5 degree intervals. Then during the pass the appropriate LEDs will light and assuming I keep the antenna aligned to these I should in theory get the best signal... Crazy??

Yes I know I could make or buy an azimuth/elevation rotator, eBay is full of low speed high torque geared DC motors with auto-stop/hold and numerous software solutions exist to drive them but this would require a bit more engineering and isn't something I can easily fabricate at the moment. My contraption would be much more rustic being made of rough cut timber!


Bright LEDs are ridiculously cheap and controlling this number from the Arduino will require the use of multiplexer drivers. The popular ones are the MAX 7219/7221

I won't go into the details of exactly what multiplexing is, other than to say that each display element (LED) is driven one at a time but by switching the electronics at high speed combined with the persistence of vision make the viewer believe the entire display is continuously active.

This technique can be used for individual LEDs, an LED grid matrix, or for 7 segment displays. Last night I successfully got a MAX7219 based 8-Digit 7-Segment LED module working.

The next stage was to investigate how an Arduino could calculate the appropriate azimuth and elevation data. Thankfully a library already exists qrpTracker (code is here), within this library is a port of the Plan-13 algorithm first written in Basic by James Miller G3RUH in 1990, subsequently ported to C by Edson Pereira, N1VTN and further updated by Howard Long, G6LVB.

Plan-13 processes keplerian elements, time and (optionally) observer location, and uplink downlink frequencies; it outputs satellite latitude and longitude, azimuth and elevation, and Doppler shifted frequencies. At the standard 16 MHz Arduino clock speed, this code can complete these calculations in approximately 30 ms. This code is reported to be highly accurate, if provided with proper data.

The important data are the observer location (longitude/latitude) and the current time. Step forward my well used GPS module which once lock is achieved can supply that data.

The next is get the appropriate up to date Keplerian twin element sets (TLE) and extract the appropriate information from it and pass that data to the Plan-13 functions.
 
The standard TLE follows the following format

You need to extract the Epoch Year/Day (including partial data), Inclination, Right Ascension, Eccentricity, Perigee, Mean anomaly and Mean Motion for a calculation (drag/orientation aren't critical) For the moment I have just extracted this manually from the latest TLE and entered it directly into the program.

After just an hour or so of research and programming I have the LED displaying the current azimuth and elevation of the FUNCube-1 satellite (AO73) based on the current position and time derived from the GPS!

The first four digits is the azimuth, the second four the elevation.

 

The next stage is to sort out the LED disc indicators, build the antenna tripod and formulate a method to upload the appropriate up to date TLE files from the PC which can be stored in the EEPROM of the micro-controller.

 

ICUBE-1 Reception Reports Needed

I have been messaging with Dr Khurram Khurshid the manager of the ICube-1 team and they are struggling a little

 ".. we received icube for a couple of days using FunCube / HumSat TLE's but not anymore we are looking for our own TLE's but haven't been able to track icube for the past few days"

They may officially ask for assistance but after unexpectedly making the first signal report back on the 21st November, I thought I was just ask if anyone could keep an ear out.

ICube-1 was released as part of the UNISAT-5 payload and if still functional is in CW mode on 145.947MHz and the message is "First Cubesat of Pakistan"

Some info/links http://amsat-uk.org/2013/11/25/unisat-5-mission-update-november-24/

I have done an analysis of my first capture  http://nerdsville.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/im-famous-and-icube-1-move-and-velox.html

 The ICube-1 facebook page http://www.facebook.com/ICUBE1

Thanks Andrew M6GTG

Did I make ICube-1's first signal report?

Just like a excited child at the moment! Why you ask? 

Well this morning saw the launch of the numerous satellites from the Dnepr rocket including Funcube-1, and this morning saw the first passes over the UK. Like many others I eagerly sat in front of my computer awaiting the chance to decode the telemetry. However I was doing it remotely using a VNC connection as I was in work...

Sure enough at 10:21 the pass started and a nice strong signal appeared on the waterfall and the FUNCube dashboard sprang to life. I managed 29 packets on the first pass!

The upload ranking at the FUNcube data warehouse

However I noticed another CW signal further up the spectrum which seemed to be on the edge of the FUNCube transponder allocation (145.950MHz) I went to twitter and asked if FUNCube-1 was transmitting a CW beacon? Peter 2E0SQL thought it might be another satellite.

At start of earlier FUNCube-1 pass, what looks like CW on transponder downlink frequency? #funcube pic.twitter.com/yLvgzYzZRJ
— Andrew Garratt (@nerdsville) November 21, 2013

I had captured the pass as an IQ file, and set about trying to decode the CW. I had several attempt using fl-digi remotely but chasing a fast moving doppler on a laggy remote connection wasn't good but I seemed to repeatedly get ***ISTAN.

On the next pass the same thing happened, this time I got the word CUBESAT several times..

The signal had the same doppler shift as FUNCube-1 so was from the same launch constellation and a quick check and I spotted ICube-1 the first cubesat launched by Institute of Space Technology in Pakistan.. which was listed as broadcasting on 145.947MHz using AFSK.

It must be.. ***ISTAN... CUBESAT.... So I sent them a message on their Facebook page and they confirmed that at this stage of the mission they were indeed supposedly broadcasting a CW beacon and what I decoded was part of the message!

Khurram project manager of ICube-1 said "Thanx Andrew ... your message was a great relief for us"

and on their facebook page 

First Signal has been received from ICUBE-1 in UK ... Alhamdulillah the ICUBE-1 mission is successful ... Congrats everyone. Satellite will pass over IST around 9:30 pm today

So it seems lowly M6GTG may have made the first signal report confirming Pakistan's first successful cubesat deployment!

I am grinning madly at the moment!

November Satellite Madness!

I haven't done any satellite tracking of late, however this month sees 37 satellites being launched carrying amateur radio payloads. Yes 37!!

Yesterday three cubesats Pico Dragon, ArduSat-1 and ArduSat-2 were jettisoned from the ISS using the JEM Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (J-SSOD), a fourth TechEdSat-3p was released this morning.

Today also saw the launch of Minotaur-1 from NASA's Wallops Island containing 29 satellites, 12 of which are amateur payloads, they have all been deployed.

Tomorrow sees the Yasny Dnepr launch carrying 31 satellites, of which 21 use amateur radio allocations, including FUNCube-1.

Get along to the FUNCube website http://funcube.org.uk/ for further information and to download the handbook and the dashboard telemetry application, after all this is what those FUNCube dongles were designed for!

For up to date information check out the Amsat-UK website, and here is a handy link for a full list of payloads and frequencies http://amsat-uk.org/2013/11/13/three-amateur-radio-satellite-deployments-in-november/

Phonesats are no more.

Sadly the Phonesats Alexandra, Graham and Bell are no more, they were always going to be shorted lived, but having launched on April 21st aboard the Orbital Sciences Antares test flight, they have sadly now deorbited.

As the Phonesat website now states

Our orbital analysis indicates that the PhoneSats have deorbited on April 27 and have burned up in Earth's atmosphere as predicted. No one has been able to hear from the satellites since, which confirms the predictions.

The PhoneSat team is continuing to develop the PhoneSats using consumer technology to greatly increase the capability of the satellite whilst developing with a low cost - our next versions are launching late this year so stay tuned.

Thank you again for your support in making this technology demonstration successful!

Must say I really enjoyed chasing these, getting some decent results with very modest equipment.

In the inhibitable words of Dr. Eldon Tyrell

Phonesat - Pictures

The Nasa Phonesat team have now put up the partially completed jigsaw puzzle formed from the submitted picture packets received from Graham and Bell over the past week. They can be viewed here

Over the last few days I have been getting quite a decent number of packets, including pictures from all three phonesats however a number of the picture packets despite being verified and accepted when submitted to the website have returned seemingly invalid webp files.

It appears the images are being broadcast in three forms, a low resolution background, then a medium resolution followed by a high resolution, slowly building up the final images.

The picture from Graham

 

The picture from Bell

First Phonesat Image Piece

Before leaving for work this morning I set up the 70cm yagi on the tripod pointing due south at around 45 degrees inclination and my ancient laptop with the original FUNCube dongle, hoping to catch some more PhoneSat packets during this afternoons passes, the first at 12:30BST, the other around 14:05BST.

I was hoping to be home for the later one, but unfortunately I was held up and wasn't, luckily I was able to set both of them to record by logging in remotely. But due to the fixed antenna meant I only was able to get the optimum signal for part of the pass.

Still I grabbed the file for the first pass and was able to analyse the resulting IQ file during a coffee break and successful decoded a handful of packets.

I was especially eager to see the result as in my mailbox this morning was a message from the PhoneSat team

Let the puzzle begin

As scheduled, Graham and Bell have just started transmitting picture packets, so please stay tuned to your radio. Since the picture packets need to be stitched to restore the complete Earth picture, we will need as many packets as possible. Ultimately a new page will be created to display the current construction of the pictures. Let the puzzle begin!

Best regards,
The PhoneSat team

Indeed one of the packets was an image piece, however my excitement was quickly tempered when I discovered it was infact just 20 x 15 pixels in size!

fm KJ6KRW-2 to CQ-0 via TELEM-0 UI  PID=F0
.5qjuM1K$e67WJJ/!*;TU:f^CP+D(TR!0REaSH12S!"T&n/J<h*!s!j:!*GO@$.A#;"qkt2UoORH!%\-Lqr;^40b;k;a]Q,IYQ(B:[r\-<:($p+rslDDQi<`UrfGn1-d^+^e8XV&5%nr[AFM,_?q18$!:`kk&-)\.

Produced this image, which I have scaled up to 200 x 150 pixels! A hint of blue, cloud and land?

The picture packets are decoded as.webp pictures. These pictures can be converted into png pictures using Google’s webp converter.

CubeSats Galore!

No the Phonesats don't look like this!

It is an interesting time if you are into chasing satellites as there is a plethora of CubeSat launches imminent.

Last night I settled down and logged into NASA-TV to watch the Orbital Sciences Antares Test Flight (A-ONE Misson) Antares is a new medium-class space launch vehicle. Following this test launch and a further demonstration mission it will hopefully become a cargo deliverly system to the International Space Station (ISS)

As part of this initial test there were a number of CubeSats on board due for deployment unfortunately with just twelve minutes on the clock the launch was halted due to a premature separation of a launch pad umbilical connection to the Antares upper stage used for data communications. Orbital is currently analysing what happened. The next launch attempt is tentatively set for no earlier than Friday pending a successful resolution of the issue and acceptable weather conditions.

The CubeSats due for deployment were part of the NASA PhoneSat project. Three CubeSats called Alexandra, Graham and Bell are 1U sized and similar to the British STRaND-1 CubeSat utilise Commericial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Electronics, namely a HTC Nexus One smartphone running the Android operating system for the Phonesat 1.0 satellites (Graham and Bell) and a Samsung Nexus S for the Phonesat 2.0 Beta satellite (Alexandra) The satellites also contain an external radio beacon, batteries and a circuit to reboot the phone if it stops transmitting, again all off the shelf commerical parts.

All three satellites are emitting packet transmission over the amateur radio band at 437.425 MHz, utilising the call sign KJ6KRW and will be spaced apart to allow reception of all three during a single pass. More details are available at http://www.phonesat.org

Also onboard Antares was the commericial DOVE-1 satellite, a technology development experiment. Originally intended to have a telemetry downlink on 145.825MHz this apparently is no longer the case.

More information about the Antares payload is at http://amsat-uk.org/2013/04/16/antares-cubesat-launch/

If the Antares does launch on Friday, it will share the skys with Soyuz-2-1a which is due to be launched at 10:00UTC from Baikonur in Kazakhstan. Amongst its payload are four CubeSats with amateur radio payloads, OSSI-1, BEESAT-2, BEESAT-3 and SOMP. Again more details can be found at the AMSAT-UK website at http://amsat-uk.org/2013/04/17/soyuz-cubesat-launch/

Also next week the launch of CZ-2D from the Jiuquan Space Centre is planned on April 26, carrying the Mode J (145/435) linear transponder satellite TURKSAT-3USAT along with the Argentine CubeBug-1 and Ecuadorian NEE-01 Pegasus TV Cubesat

TURKSAT-3USAT - http://amsat-uk.org/satellites/turksat-3usat/
CubeBug-1 - http://amsat-uk.org/2013/03/22/cubebug-1/
NEE-01 Pegasus - http://amsat-uk.org/?p=14689

So it looks like being a busy time, once the orbits are known and the TLEs are published.

Sadly it seems STRaND-1, that got me so excited last month has fallen silent after its transmissions became intermittent over the Easter weekend. After failing to receive any radio transmissions the team are apparently asking the EME weak-signal community to listen for the STRaND-1 LO (Local Oscillator) at 312.5MHz to see if it is still alive.

Receiving LES1 a satellite built in 1965!

A few weeks ago I read a news article about the miraculous reactivation of LES1, this satellite was built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and launched back in 1965. The satellite failed to reach its intended orbit owing to a wiring error and has been drifting out of control ever since, it was abandoned in 1967 as a piece of space junk but has seemingly begun transmitting again after 46 years.

Back in December Phil Williams G3YPQ from Cornwall noticed a peculiar signal and after some research determined it was LES1. The odd signal is probably caused by the satellite tumbling end over end every 4 seconds as the solar panels become shadowed by the engine. ‘This gives the signal a particularly ghostly sound as the voltage from the solar panels fluctuates’ Phil says. It is likely that the on board batteries have now disintegrated and some other component failure has caused the transmitter on 237Mhz, to start up when its in sunlight.

Eager to see if I could receive this ancient satellite I dug out an unused DAB 3-element antenna and mounted it on a tripod and successfully monitored two passes this afternoon.

I used my FUNCube Dongle (original version) and SDR-Radio V1.5 and this was the analysis of the resulting recorded IQ file for the pass that started around 17:30pm. You can clearly see the satellite signal as it undergoes Doppler shift and the four second regular frequency shift caused by the tumbling.

At its most northerly latitude the satellite orbit passes over North Africa, but due to its height has a longer orbit period than most other satellites and is receivable over much of Europe. How long it keeps transmitting is a mystery.

listen to ‘LES1 Signal’ on Audioboo

STRaND-1 - First attempts

As I posted earlier this week a number of satellites were launched into orbit on board the PSLV-C20 rocket, this included the first UK CubeSat, STRaND-1.

STRaND stands for Surrey Training, Research and Nanosatellite Demonstration and STRaND-1 is hopefully the first of a long line of STRaND nanosatellites from the academic researchers at the Surrey Space Centre (SSC) based at the University of Surrey in conjuction with Surrey Satellite Technologies Limited (SSTL).

The innovative STRaND-1 CubeSat was built and tested in just three months and is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of using cheap smartphone electronics to control a spacecraft, since it contains a Google Nexus One Android phone as part of its experimental payload. STRaND-1 carries an amateur radio AX.25 packet radio downlink on 437.568 MHz using 9k6 bps FSK modulated data HDLC frame, NRZI encoding.

Official orbital elements (TLEs) have already been produced so the current position and prediction passes can be calculated and available on n2yo.com

At the time of this post STRaND-1 is passing over in UK in the early morning (South-North) and early evening (North-South), both times are not particularly convenient on weekdays due to work commitments, but last night I did manage to have my first proper attempt to capture some of the telemetry.

My 'ground station' consisted of a FUNCube Dongle and SDR-Radio (V1.5) with doppler correction enabled. It was connected to a small Moonraker ZL-Special 7-element antenna mounted on a small tripod with my Android phone running the Satellite-AR application mounted behind it. The Satellite-AR assists in pointing it in the correct direction as the pictures below demonstrate.

This slightly blury picture shows the satellite cluster containing STRaND-1 displayed in the Satellite-AR app, by moving the antenna on the tripod I attempt to keep this in the centre of the screen hopefully maximising the signal.

As you can see on the waterfall I did manage to receive the telemetry signal. It isn't a continuous signal, data is broadcast in short bursts with long gaps between the 'frames'

The next stage was to take this and using a number of software packages, including a TNC modem emulator and extract the data. The process is described here by Jan van Gils (PE0SAT) I have had a few attempts with my captured signals, unfortunately with little success I think due to the signal to noise ratio being too low.

This morning I was up nice and early to capture the pass at approximately 05:50, this time I used my FUNCube Dongle Pro Plus on another laptop, but for some reason the received signal was very poor. In desperation I took the antenna off the tripod and held it horizontally rather than vertically and did manage to get a signal, unfortunately it was at the end of the pass and STRaND-1 was heading over the horizon.

Still I am happy with my initial efforts.

FITSAT-1 - Full telemetry decode achieved.

Had an excellent FITSAT-1 pass last night, successfully received nearly three full frames of CW telemetry.

The image above (from the heavens-above.com prediction site) shows a similar pass and illustrates the reception window which is just less than 8 minutes. Each frame of telemetry takes around 2.5 minutes to receive, so I was extremely happy with the results.

Again I recorded the pass using SDR-Radio and played back the doppler corrected IQ file later decoding with the MRP40 program, hear is a small video demonstrating the decoding process.



and this was the resulting telemetry data when run through the analyser program (see previous post).

---------------------------------------
FITSAT-1 NIWAKA Downlink CW Code
---------------------------------------
Input Data------------------
S1 :f00501bb
S2 :88db0101
S3 :02000102
S4 :1e20201f
S5 :1a12aae7
-------S1------
S-mater of 437MHz RX             :4.69[V]
Total Voltage of Solar cells       :0.1[V]
Total Current of Solar Cells       :0[mA]
Voltage of single cell battery     :3.65[V]
-------S2------
Current of single cell battery     :1054.69[mA]
Voltage of 3 series battery        :12.83[V]
Current of 3 series battery        :0[mA]
Voltage of 2.5V reference          :0.02[V]
-------S3------
Voltage of Solar cell + X          :0.07[V]
Voltage of Solar cell + Y          :0[V]
Voltage of Solar cell - X          :0.04[V]
Voltage of Solar cell - Y          :0.07[V]
-------S4------
Temperature of 3 series battery  　  :2.73[℃]
Temperature of single cell battery 　:6.25[℃]
Temperature of +Z side     　        :6.25[℃]
Temperature of –Z side        　    :4.49[℃]
-------S5------
S-meter of 1.2GHz RX                :0.46[V]
------Timestamp-----  
14day 3hour 49min 59sec

I have also uploaded a better recording of the audio.

FITSAT-1 CW Telemetry by nerdsville

Well got 80% of a full FITSAT-1 Telemetry Frame

Earlier today I posted about my latest attempts at receiving the FITSAT-1 Cubesat, the reception hadn't proved too difficult however actually decoding the morse code was proving difficult!

Having another go with the MRP40 decode software and replaying a recorded IQ wave file from yesterday I successfully decoded 80% of a full telemetry frame!

I also found this interesting pdf file detailing the construction of FITSAT-1 and discovered the 437MHz transmitter is only 100mW. So we have a flying metal cube measuring just 10cm x 10cm x 10cm travelling at approximately 4.5 miles/sec roughly 270 miles above the earth, transmitting with just a fifth of the power of one of those PMR446 hand held walkie talkies that in my experience struggle to maintain a contact over a few hundred meters! Isn't technology wonderful?

FITSAT-1, TechEdSat and F-1 Cubesats after leaving the ISS

Anyhow this was the telemetry frame, as decoded using a PC program developed by one of the students on the FITSAT team.

---------------------------------------
FITSAT-1 NIWAKA Downlink CW Code
---------------------------------------

Input Data------------------
S1 :f01601ba
S2 :8dbd8181
S3 :20001820
S4 :1e202020
S5 :*
-------S1------
S-mater of 437MHz RX :4.69[V]
Total Voltage of Solar cells :0.43[V]
Total Current of Solar Cells :0[mA]
Voltage of single cell battery :3.63[V]
-------S2------
Current of single cell battery :93.75[mA]
Voltage of 3 series battery :11.07[V]
Current of 3 series battery :0[mA]
Voltage of 2.5V reference :2.52[V]
-------S3------
Voltage of Solar cell + X :1.13[V]
Voltage of Solar cell + Y :0[V]
Voltage of Solar cell - X :0.84[V]
Voltage of Solar cell - Y :1.13[V]
-------S4------
Temperature of 3 series battery 　 :2.73[℃]
Temperature of single cell battery 　:6.25[℃]
Temperature of +Z side 　 :6.25[℃]
Temperature of –Z side 　 :6.25[℃]
-------S5------
S-meter of 1.2GHz RX :No Data
Timestamp :No Data

Some FITSAT-1 Telemetry Decoded

It was dry and a lovely clear sky last night and I had several opportunities to receive the latest Cubesats.

I made some sight modification to the tripod mounting of the small 70cm Yagi antenna I am using, repositioning the clamp allowed me to secure my Android smart phone behind it. Then by using the Satellite-AR app I was able to hopefully point and track more accurately.

As you can see from this close up, it is quite a useful tool. Selecting the Cubesat catagory in the application, shows the procession of the cluster one after the other. The Cubesats have now spaced sufficiently to allow reception of WE-WISH which is just dropping out of sight as FITSAT-1 is starting its pass.

One thing I hadn't counted on last night was the very high elevation and I struggled to turn and tilt the tripod quickly enough whilst still viewing the screen on the phone, this will hopefully improve with practice!

Previously to the tripod I hand held the antennas but the drawback with that method was not being able to check and make adjustments on the computer, the tripod at least allows me to maintain reception.

I again received WE-WISH but the signal was too weak and short lived for any reasonable attempt at decoding the SSTV image. FITSAT-1 was however much better, getting relatively clear signals from the CW telemetry beacon, however I have been struggling to actually decode the messages, however after some research I tried the MRP40 Morse Code Decoder program, which appears to be excellent and as you can see from the screenshot below successfully decoded some of the telemetry messages. 

Definitely got the bit between my teeth now, will try to get a full telemetry frame this evening, weather permitting!

WE-WISH and FITSAT-1 Received

The recently released Cubesats were due to pass with high elevation late last evening, so the new antenna was mounted out in the garden on a tripod and the FUNCube Dongle connected to the trusty laptop in the shack.

The Cubesats FITSAT-1, WE-WISH and TechEdSat are now supported by the Satellite-AR application on my android phone allowing me a reasonable chance at tracking them.

According to the tracking data the WE-WISH Cubesat is ahead of FITSAT-1 on the orbit, so my first attempt was to capture some of the Infra-Red SSTV imagery it is sending back, I did managed to receive the signal as you can see on the waveform below, you will also see SDR-Radio was preforming doppler correction very well  indicated by the slanted central IQ spur and local 'carrier' in the middle of the transmission (was playing back a captured IQ wavefile) Sadly the WE-WISH signal wasn't strong enough and didn't last long enough for any meaningful decode, but I was able to confirm that instead of being at 437.505MHz it is nearer 437.514MHz as was reported on AMSAT-UK

WE-WISH Downlink Transmission, received in UK 16-OCT-2012 19:32UTC

I was very happy to have received this as the WE-WISH downlink transmitter is reported to be only 100mW! As the signal disappeared I quickly switched to the latter stages of the FITSAT-1 pass and got some nice clear bursts of the CW beacon.

FITSAT-1 Downlink Transmission, received in UK 16-OCT-2012

Tonight there are two other nice high elevation passes of the Cubesat cluster, so hopefully will get out to have another attempt.

It worked for three weeks

After seemingly fixing that broken laptop it has failed to boot up this morning!

I noted that it has been running hot again, the heat sink port on the side has been getting seriously warm so if I do attempt another re-flow of the GPU (if that is the fault) I will have to look at improving the cooling. I am thinking I might drill some holes through the bottom casing to allow more air in and might fit an override switch on the fan since it seems to only come on when very very warm.

What is doubly annoying is that over the weekend I managed to receive what I believe are the FITSAT-1 and TechEdSat Cubesats. My earlier attempts last week were only partially successful and the one time I did manage to get really good signals I forgot to set it to record the IQ file.

Over the weekend I was away from home, visiting the in-laws. I had taken a scanner, my FUNCube Dongle and laptop. I appropriated an indoor TV aerial and surprisingly managing to get some clearly audible signals, despite major issues with pager breakthrough and interference caused by the aerials wideband amplifier.
 

As soon I manage to get the laptop working, or recover the IQ files from its hard drive I will post the results.

Operation Cubesat

It is a sad time here at the moment as my Father-in-law passed away at the weekend following a long illness. Obviously the priority at the moment is dealing with the aftermath and supporting the wife and family.

However I have managed a few hours to myself this evening to make an attempt at receiving the newly launched CubeSats. This news item has some amazing pictures of the satellites as they were released from the ISS

A full technical breakdown of the new satellites and frequencies can be found here. At the present time signals have been received from WE-WISH, TechEdSat and FITSAT-1 and NanoRack/F1 appears to be silent. I did get some of the FITSAT-1 CW beacon using the antenna in the loft the other night, but was a bit scratchy and didn't manage any reasonable decode. I was using the orbit information of the ISS, but the satellites are now a few minutes in front of the ISS and new TLEs have been issued by Celestrack (1998-067CN-CS)

As it happens the 2012 National Hamfest took place a few weekends ago, and I purchased a small 70cm Yagi antenna, known as a ZL-Special. I am hoping this will give me some decent results as the satellites are mostly in the 437Mhz range.

Saw and Heard the ISS on Yuri's Night

Today is Cosmonautics Day in Russia, a holiday that celebrates the first manned space flight made on April 12, 1961 by the 27-year-old Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Gagarin circled the Earth for 1 hour and 48 minutes aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft. Coincidentally, it is also the anniversary of the first Space Shuttle launch that occurred 20 years after the historic Vostok flight.

Tonight on what is known as Yuri's Night cosmonauts on board the International Space Station made contact with St Petersburg in Russia.

The pass of the ISS over the UK starting aat 20:28 UTC was extremely bright and visible despite the cloudy sky and as it passed into Eastern Europe the contact began on 145.800MHz. I managed to capture some very scratchy audio with my FUNCube Dongle and the loft antenna. 

  ISS St. Petersburg contact 12-04-2012 by nerdsville

Video of VO52(HAMSAT)

Due to work and family commitments and the currently inconvenient timing of the passes I really haven't had a serious attempt at receiving any of the downlinks from the numerous Cubesats launched on the Vega rocket back on Monday February 13.

I have managed to get some faint transmissions from what I believe is Masat-1 which has now been officially designated MagyarSat-OSCAR-72 (MO-72) I have also seen a number of other traces on the waterfall display of the sdr  (using the FUNCube dongle) They are in the correct frequency range and appear and disappear as the cluster of cubesats were predicted as passing overhead.

I have managed to make a video of  a pass of the SSB VO52(HAMSAT) downlink being received by the FCD this morning using just the antenna in the loft.



Operating a camera in one hand and trying to track the signal isn't that easy, but you get the idea!

I have got a chance this weekend to have a proper attempt at the Vega cubesats.