I've managed to bring back to life an historic recording of the one of the first space to Earth SSTV transmissions from 1985.
My equipment was:
- The ubiquitous Robot 400 SSTV decoder/encoder
- Icom IC251E 2m all modes transceiver
- 9 element horizontally polarised Tonna beam
- BBC Micro Model 'B' - for titling
- Grundig CR455A - which I still have and is still in mint condition
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I played back the recording and decoded it using an Android mobile phone app. then tidied up the image in Paint Shop Pro.
The date was Saturday 3rd August 1985 and the transmission started at approximately 19:10 GMT.
The recording link has all the comments from Dr. Tony England/W0ORE on board the shuttle and - I think - is well worth listening to! You could even try decoding it the same way as I did!
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Here's the link ....
● SSTV recording using Robot 400 ●
B/W image received at GB3RS.
Colour image received at GB3RS.
The equipment used at GB3RS:
- Yaesu FT726R transceiver
- Two Jaybeam 10 XY Yagis with switchable polarization
- Robot 1200C colour SSTV converter
Part of the transcript from September 1985's RadCom:
"The Society had been advised that Dr England would attempt to have a contact with GB3RS during Orbit 79.
Equipment was checked and re-checked and a simple picture, consisting of a short greetings message to Dr England and a drawing of the spacecraft, was hastily prepared in case it proved possible to transmit it to the Shuttle.
As 1909 GMT approached, three pairs of ears were listening down into the noise. At 1910 GMT the voice of Dr England was heard, in contact with the Scout station EI3ISJ at the Irish Scout Jamboree
At that stage the signal was quite noisy but as W0ORE had a brief contact with the Denbigh School Radio Society station G1GJY at Bletchley he rapidly became fully quieting in the GB3RS receiver.
And then the magic words "GB3RS, this is W0ORE on board Challenger" were heard and a historic contact began.
Dr England said that they had "....a kind of a rocky start" but that they were now "doing great" and indeed were to remain in orbit for another day.
Asked about the progress of the British experiments, Dr England said that both the X-ray telescope and the CHASE experiment to measure the amount of helium on the sun were working very well and that, all in all, "....your British experiments are getting along famously".
He then sent the complete sequence of slow-scan television pictures, which were almost perfectly resolved, and GB3RS transmitted its reply. By then, however, the spacecraft was rapidly disappearing over the horizon and it was not known for some time whether Dr England had received TV pictures from GB3RS.
Happily, NASA was able to confirm later that the pictures had been "perfect copy" aboard Challenger.
GB3RS was therefore the first (and, as it later turned out, the only) station outside the United States to have two-way voice and television contact with the spacecraft, although by no means the first to have two-way voice contact."