KG-STV experimental Slow Scan from ISS - Feb 2022

On the 20th of February 2022 the ISS cross-band repeater rig - Kenwood D710GA - was 're-assigned' to run a digital Slow Scan TV experiment.

ARISS Europe - using the callsign ON4ISS - was uplinking the images from the amateur radio telebridge groundstation in Belgium.

A 1 minute and 40 second transmission was followed by a 1 minute and 20 second break.

KG-STV - a Minimum Shift Keying application designed by JJ0OBZ - was used to transmit a number of images over 5 passes  between 05:10 and 12:00 UTC whilst the ISS was over Europe.

KG-STV sends a 320 x 240 compressed JPEG in 15 lines of 20-off 16 x 16 pixel blocks. 2 frequencies are used ... 1800Hz for the ones and 1200Hz for the zeros. The signal only occupies 600Hz and so is very efficent.

It is possible for the receiving station to send a block repeat request to the transmitting station in order to have it resend missing, or corruped, blocks to produce a 100% image but unfortunately this would not be possible with this test.

My images were from the 08:31Z and 10:08Z - the two highest altitude passes. The 87 degree pass produced the better of the 2 images, but both are marred by missing and corrupted data.

 

  

 

 Passion SSTV - an amateur radio group in France - kindly created a certificate for the occasion!

 

 

 Click on the image to see it full size! 😉

 

Hopefully there will be more tests in the future!