On the weekend of October 12, 2024, I received SSTV from the ISS at the dacha - on the Uda-Yaga directional antenna from the second floor of the dacha house.

I would like to share my observations of the ISS SSTV transmission on October 12, 2024. In this case, a 4-element antenna was used in vertical polarization, at a height of 4 meters above the ground (in the attic) with manual tracking from west to southeast. The receiver - Baofeng UV-5R is connected to an RG-213 cable 2 meters long using an SMA-UHF adapter. SSTV decoding program -Robot36 for Android. Transmitting sound this time without a cable, through the station's speaker and smartphone's microphone.

Since the conditions at the dacha are almost ideal, I expected that receiving images from the ISS would be much more successful than from the city, where buildings and wires interfere. And so it turned out. The maximum signal level to the directional antenna of 4 elements without elevation has increased, to approximately level 58 by ear. The duration of good reception also increased compared to working with a non-directional "whip" antenna on the roof of a car.

At the same time, for about 10 seconds at a low elevation, the end of the transmission of the first picture was faintly audible - over Western Europe.

Then, after a pause, the ISS signal became strong. The 2nd picture was received almost completely, but with some distortion (line shift).

And the 3rd - almost completely, when the station goes beyond the horizon. The reason why there are only 2 images is a significant, several tens of seconds break in the transmission between pictures No. 1-2 and No. 2-3.

A break in transmission was observed on another day.

Regarding reception, I can say the following: an uda-yagi antenna of 4 elements for the ISS at 145.800 MHz is the minimum, because a slight hiss is heard (the radio station that was receiving was Baofeng UV-5R, 50 km from the city there is no interference and there should not be a drop in sensitivity due to overload of the receiving path with interference).

You only need to rotate the antenna two times - after about three minutes from the appearance of the satellite in the west to the maximum elevation (apogee) in the south and after three minutes when the satellite’s altitude above the horizon decreases as it moves to the southeast.

Why did some on the cqham.ru forum note the lack of reception on previous days - for example, October 10?

Over Europe, 3 pictures and 2 transmission breaks (pauses) are transmitted:
1)first picture- over Western Europe (intended for radio amateurs from M0, DE, IK, F) UA1 is not accepted in St. Petersburg.
2) pause 120 seconds.
3) second picture- over Russia for UA3. PD120 transmission - 120 seconds. Total - 4 minutes or half an orbit.
4) pause 120 seconds.
5)third picture- for the Urals UA6 (PD120). Total 120+120+120+120+120= 5*120 = 600 seconds =10 minutes.

Ten minutes is exactly the time during which the ISS station is visible at the latitude of St. Petersburg.

Conclusions and advice:

• directional yagi antenna 4 elements is the minimum for receiving the ISS.
• to work with the space station from 1 degree and receive two SSTV images, it is necessary that there are no obstacles from horizon to horizon. Otherwise, even outside the city the forest interferes and reception starts from 3 degrees above the horizon.
• radio receiver in the station - the more sensitive, the better. The RDA 1846 chip in Baofeng is average in quality, compared to the superheterodyne chip in the Yaesu VX-6R and the new SDR chip in the Retevis RT-85.
• continuous tracking of the ISS, judging by the signal, is not necessary, it is loud 57-58 when the antenna is pointed south. You can rotate the short yagi antenna in the horizontal plane two times per turn.

P.S. according to information on CQham.ru during pauses on 145.800 there was a switch of SSTV to the frequency 437.800 MHz. Last frequency 437.800 designated as the output frequency of the crossband repeater of the International Space Station. Information about the use of the 70cm band for SSTV was on the ISS fan club website in last year 2023. This year there was no information about the frequency 437.8 MHz on the website ISS Fan Club, on another site for SSTV Diploma 2024 too, neither in press release.

Related publications

SSTV reception from the ISS on October 9, 2024

Amateur Radio Satellites 2024

Work via FM and SSB satellites, Doppler effect correction

Radio amateur satellite frequencies

Doppler compensation using GPredict and RigCtlD