I received a SSTV station with call sign UT1KWA from the Ukraine on 14230 kHz. It turned out to be the Rivne DX club, from Rivne, a city in the northwest of the Ukraine.
Pavlo (UT1KY) is running the station. He is a teacher by profession, but also teaches kids to how to run radio. A very nice initiative as I welcome anything that interests kids in technology! QSL manager for the station is Antonello IK2DUW.
Pavlo also shared some nice pictures of him and kids working at the club, showing some nice awards they got. Given privacy considerations I prefer to share a picture they posted on their website. I think this is Pavlo some years ago. His beard is a bit more grey today (as is my own hair).
The Rivne DX club
Thank you Pavlo for your kind reply, all the best with your initiative and the Rivne DX club. It’s these sort of connects that make our hobby so nice.
A few times per year the International Space Station (ISS) has an event in which they transmit SSTV messages in the amateur band. Between April 11th and 16th there was such an event, dedicated to “Humans in Space”. Note that April 12th, 1961 was the date of the first human space flight with Yuri Gagarin.
The frequency used was 145.800 MHz in the 2 meter amateur band, which is covered by my ICOM R8600 so I decided to give it a try. I used the AMSAT site to get information when the ISS was flying over. Each morning there were 5 passes, about 1.5 hr apart. During a pass the ISS would “theoretically” be in visible range for 6 to 10 minutes. As I didn’t have a 2 meter band antenna I just pointed my 5 elements 100 MHz Yagi (6 m elevation) westward to see what would happen.
The Amsat site provides a tool to predict ISS pass times.
On the first try I was lucky. The SSTV broadcasts were in FM and PD120 mode, which took me some time to sort out. Good thing that I made an SDR recording so I could leisurely experiment with fine tuning the decoding. Now each picture takes 2 minutes to send, followed by a pause of 2 minutes. And while the ISS is “theoretically” in sight for 6 to 10 minutes, the reality is that at my location I don’t have a free view from west to east. On the west there are houses and somewhat further away a 9 story apartment tower. But east is worse with a nearby 5 story apartment blocking my view. Combined with the directional properties of the antenna it meant that I never managed to have more than 2 minutes of good quality reception each pass. As you can see in the pictures below:
But good enough to upload my pictures to the ARISS website and apply for an award which was almost immediately returned (Tip: do check you spam email box, as that’s where my copy landed!).
Award for my reception of ISS during the “Humans in Space” event.
Now the problem is that I don’t have a reliable source for upcoming ISS events. The ARISS website doesn’t always seem to mention them. I got my information form the AMSAT-UK website, which had links to various relevant pages. So suggest you follow them if you are interested to try for yourself.
I’m not so much into HAM radio. Not that I have anything against HAMs – on the contrary – but there is already so much to listen to that I decided not to go there yet. If I’m going to do HAM I want to be able to transmit myself.
That said, I’ve found SSTV always attractive. And particularly when MF conditions aren’t great I don’t mind “sacrificing” one of my DSC receivers scanning 14230 kHz (or another HF SSTV channel). This way I picked up WA1QZK from Boston.
Intercontinental DX is always nice. Problem is that as an SWL (even when registered with VERON) you don’t always have access to email address information in a database like QRZ.com. But Ron, operator of WA1QKZ was so kind to share his email with SWLs as well, so I sent a report… and received the QSL card below. Thank you Ron!
EH3ARLL advocates Catalunya as a separate DXCC country
Browsing through my SSTV recordings on 14230 kHz I found this interesting call sign: EH3ARRL. The station was on air September 23rd, 11.41 h UTC. Checking the QRZ.com website I learned that the call sign EH3ARRL is owned by a group of amateur radio operators from Catalunya. EH3ARRL is advocating that Catalunya should be a separate DXCC country.
For those unfamiliar with the radio amateur jargon: ARRL is the American Radio Relay League, the national association for radio amateurs in the USA. DXCC stands for DX Century Club, an award for those operators who can confirm having worked stations from 100 countries. And of course the ARRL defines what counts as a country, and doesn’t. All over the world radio amateurs use the ARRL DXCC definition to determine how many countries they worked. By the way, as a DX-er I always used the EDXC country list, which is a bit different.
The EH3ARRL group argues that Catalunya, while being part of Spain, has its own government, own police and own telecommunications. And they have their own EA3 radio prefix. They quote examples like Scotland, England, Wales and various other territories and enclaves that are counted as a separate DXCC radio country, while they are also not an official state. If you agree with them you can sign their petition on the change.org website.
Later that afternoon I received the SSTV picture from EA3BIL, who happens to be one of the operators behind EH3ARRL.
My JRC NRD535 is usually tuned to 14230 kHz in SSTV watch mode (using MultiPSK). This weekend I noticed a couple of interesting SSTV images:
The HAM station ZG2GI was in the air during Gibraltar National Day, September 10th. I considered it a catch worth posting on my site. The day commemorates Gibraltar’s first sovereignty referendum of 1967. Gibraltarian voters were asked whether they wished to either pass under Spanish sovereignty, or remain under British sovereignty, with institutions of self-government. Listening to the radio (or is this more like “viewing the radio” ) makes that you learn something new every day.
Gibraltar is a separate EDXC radio country. There is still a medium wave station on 1458 kHz which was always difficult to receive. But with more and more stations shutting down, who knows? For now, Lyca Radio – oddly enough with 125 kW one of the most powerful AM stations left in the UK – is still dominating the frequency here in my home QTH Woerden.
The alternative in the 80-ies was to receive the Royal Navy from Gibraltar who was broadcasting with callsign GYU in CW on shortwave. And yes, my QSL shows the monkey and the rock!
I have never really been into amateur radio/HAM. Maybe that is something for later when the last broadcast station has left the waves for the internet. There is one exception to the rule though. I bought the MULTIPSK decoder a few months ago, and occasionally I like to keep it running on 14230 kHz to see if I can catch some SSTV DX. It is probably all about the instant satisfaction of receiving a nice picture.
One June 9th conditions allowed me to make my first Transatlantic SSTV catch: VE2JWC from St. Jerome, Quebec Canada. Cute detail is that the picture shows the QTH of the station.
My first Transatlantic SSTV reception was VE2JCW from St. Jerome, Quebec
And on June 10th I also received stations from New Hampshire and Wisconsin. Nothing spectacular probably for the seasoned radio amateur, but a first for me!
N1DOU, from Barnstead, New Hampshire
W1QC from Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin
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