Two weeks ago, another ARISS SSTV event was announced to celebrate 40 years of amateur radio in human spaceflight. Since I already received good pictures and had a lot of fun at the last ARISS SSTV event, I definitely wanted to participate in this event again. In preparation for the event, I built a new Yagi-Uda antenna with excellent reception performance in the 2-meter band.

Again, 12 images were transmitted over the course of a week. The ISS made several passes over my location during the event, almost all of them in the evening. This fit well with my schedule. The pictures show the work and achievements of Owen Garriott, an astronaut and radio amateur who operated the first amateur radio station in space during the STS-9 mission under his callsign W5LFL.

The event was a great success thanks to the new antenna. Thanks to the ability to attach my smartphone directly to the boom of the antenna and track the ISS while recording, I only had to carry a small amount of equipment and was able to set up my rig quickly. As you can see in the video below, I received a strong signal even though the ISS was only just above the horizon. The transmission shown in the video is picture 7/12 which became a little blurry at the end due to the ISS passing beyond the horizon.

Unfortunately, I had trouble tracking the signal on my phone due to the Doppler shift. Since the SDR records at a fixed frequency while the frequency of the transmission changes due to the Doppler shift, the recorded audio file contained a DC offset.

This sometimes prevented QSSTV from decoding the image from the recorded audio file and I had to correct the DC offset manually in Audacity. While this worked fine for a constant DC offset - e.g. for a recording while the ISS was on the horizon moving towards or away from my position at an almost constant speed - it was a pain for a recording of a pass over my head, where the DC offset was not constant, but changed continuously as in the picture above.

Nevertheless, I achieved good results:

Owen Garriott, W5LFL, First to Operate Amateur Radio from Space
Picture Antenna Start of recording QTH
1 / 12 Yagi-Uda antenna 2024-11-15 21:24:10 UTC JO61vb
W5LFL Testing Motorola Radio Prior to STS-9 Flight
Picture Antenna Start of recording QTH
2 / 12 Yagi-Uda antenna 2024-11-15 21:28:19 UTC JO61vb
Owen, W5LFL, Performing Radio Simulation Training
Picture Antenna Start of recording QTH
3 / 12 Yagi-Uda antenna 2024-11-15 18:12:58 UTC JO61vb
Owen, W5LFL, with his STS-9 Space Shuttle Columbia Crewmates
Picture Antenna Start of recording QTH
4 / 12 Yagi-Uda antenna 2024-11-13 20:09:40 UTC JO61vb
Shuttle Columbia STS-9 Launch: Nov 28, 1983
Picture Antenna Start of recording QTH
5 / 12 Yagi-Uda antenna 2024-11-16 20:35:48 UTC JO61vb
First Contact! Dec 1, 1983 between Owen, W5LFL on STS-9 and Lance Collister WA1JXN
Picture Antenna Start of recording QTH
6 / 12 Yagi-Uda antenna 2024-11-16 19:00:11 UTC JO61vb
STS-9 Landing Dec 8, 1983: First Amateur Radio on Human Spaceflight Mission Ends
Picture Antenna Start of recording QTH
7 / 12 Yagi-Uda antenna 2024-11-16 19:04:20 UTC JO61vb