Chertsey Radio Club
Hello, I am part of Chertsey Radio Club.
Over 3 weekends in July there were several
amateur radio experiments run from the
International Space Station and I would love
to share with the BBC and the general public
what has been happening, hopefully this will
encourage some people to look and have a go
at our hobby, or spark an interest in space or
communications in general.
Chertsey Radio Club is also proud to be
associated with AMSAT-UK, who help track
monitor and support all things satellite related
and keep the community updated with all
the latest operating and technical data on the
satellites.
Part-1
Firstly, on 5th July, The ISS crew were instructed
to test out 2 cube satellites, Tanusha-1 and
Tanusha-2, before deployment.
The Tanyusha-YuZGU 1 and 2 (also TanyushaSWSU
1 and 2 or Tanyusha 1 and 2), also known
as Radioskaf RS-6 and 7, are two small Russian
experimental satellites, which are to be deployed
from the ISS during a spacewalk. They were
developed at the Southwestern State University
(SWSU, YuZGU), Kursk
The satellites will broadcast greetings messages
in Russian, English, Spanish and Chinese.
The test was to ensure the Satellites would both
transmit their messages, so using the ISS onboard
Amateur radio equipment, relay the messages
from the satellite out on 144.800Mhz FM.
Amateur radio operators around the world were
given an opportunity to hear the messages and I
could receive them on my radio set at home.
Part 2
On Saturday 8th July, being experimenters in
radio communications, we were very lucky to
be able to send voice communications via the
International space station, whilst the satellites
were being swapped over.
The uplink was on 437.050Mhz (output of
the Satellite) and downlink on 145.800Mhz I
was very lucky to make an initial contact with
another Amateur radio station in Spain EA4SG. On the second pass a few hours later, I could
talk to Amateur radio operators in Spain, France
and I also spoke to my friend in the UK Abdel
(M0NPT) which was an exciting and amazingly
rare opportunity.
Part 3
On the last weekend Amateur Radio on the
International Space Station (ARISS) celebrated its
20th anniversary – 20 years on both Mir Space
Station and on the ISS.
This organization helps to run and maintain
amateur radio on the space station, and set up
and run the contacts with many schools around
the world including Tim Peake’s Principia
mission when he spoke to 10 UK schools last
year.
As part of the celebrations the ISS sent a set of 12
images using slow scan television (SSTV), which
when heard on the radio sounds like the old fax
noises.
We were able to receive the sounds and
convert them into images when the ISS was in
range.
People all around the globe used simple
receivers along with mobile phones, raspberry
pi’s, computers and tablets to decode the images.
I was able to get all 12 of the images at home
and some of them are displayed here. the full
set can be seen here: http://chertseyradioclub.
blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/12-sstv-imagescelebrating-20-years-of.html
I recorded a couple of the passes, so you can see
how this works, but the earliest in the UK was
23:23 and transmitted through into the early
hours of the morning, so we left the decoder
running and went to bed.
Best regards, M0JFP Chertsey Radio Club (MX0MXO)
2 Sensors
