Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Frans Goddijn, who shares the following guest post:

Es’hail-2 Geostationary Satellite – credit Es’hailSat (via Amsat-UK.org)

Receiving sounds from the Amsat QO-100 Es’hail2 stationary satellite

by Frans Goddijin

Over the last 1-2 years several radio enthusiasts have mentioned the Amsat QO-100 Es’hail2 stationary satellite but so far I had no clue where to begin receiving signals from it. There seems to be no shop selling a complete kit so one has to source and assemble the parts.

Here’s a video (below) about how I did it.

Tije de Jong helped by building me a custom stand for the satellite dish, Hans Holsink (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDBIMjCUKtY and www.hybridpretender.nl) gave me some tips over the mail as did William Lagerberg, a fellow radio enthusiast who has built a small forest of antennas around his home.

In preparation, I looked for pages and videos of other setups but often what I found was way too technical for me, or focused on one or two aspects while skipping over everything else.

So I gathered material from different sources, gleaned information from several websites and videos.

But above all I had the help of Tije, Hans and William who enabled me to get there.

One shortcut that I thought I was taking in the beginning was using an app to get the dish lined up but as it turned out the app seemed to think the satellite was playing hide and seek, sometimes in plain sight across the street and then slowly disappearing around the corner. 😉

Also, I used LiDAR measurement in the app to establish what size and type dish I had bought (a cheap no-brand thing in a store where immigrants buy satellite dishes to watch homeland TV) but later on Tije pointed out to me that the dish on the app screen looked nothing like mine which explained why the orientation tool of the app had me pointing the dish ever higher.

Once I used the information on https://eshail.batc.org.uk/point/ I got going and lining up the dish was easy.

Video:

[I also] made a second video this time highlighting the simple details of the setup so others can easily copy the approach:

Best regards,

Frans

Spread the radio love

This is a VHF news item, not shortwave, but many SWLing Post readers have wideband SDRs, HT’s and scanners that cover this portion of the VHF band. Unique opportunity:

(Source: AMSAT bb)

40 years ago this week, the historic joint Apollo-Soyuz mission was conducted. Apollo-Soyuz (or Soyuz-Apollo in Russia) represented the first joint USA-Soviet mission and set the stage for follow-on Russia-USA space collaboration on the Space Shuttle, Mir Space Station and the International Space Station. The Soyuz and Apollo vehicles were docked from July 17-19, 1975, during which time joint experiments and activities were accomplished with the 3 USA astronauts and 2 Soviet Cosmonauts on-board. Apollo-Soyuz was the final mission of the Apollo program and the last USA human spaceflight mission until the first space shuttle mission in 1981.

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of this historic international event, the ARISS team has developed a series of 12 Slow Scan Television (SSTV) images that will be sent down for reception by schools, educational organizations and ham radio operators, worldwide. The SSTV images are planned to start sometime Saturday morning, July 18 and run through Sunday July 19. These dates are tentative and are subject to change. The SSTV images can be received on 145.80 MHz and displayed using several different SSTV computer programs that are available on the internet.

We encourage you to submit your best received SSTV images to:
http://spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/submit.php

The ARISS SSTV image gallery will post the best SSTV images received from this event at:
http://spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/index.php

Also, as a special treat, on Saturday July 18 the ISS Cosmonauts will take time out to conduct an ARISS contact with students attending the Moon Day/Frontiers of Flight Museum event in Dallas Texas. This Russian Cosmonaut-USA Student contact is planned to start around 16:55 UTC through the W6SRJ ground station located in Santa Rosa, California. ARISS will use the 145.80 MHz voice frequency downlink (same as the SSTV downlink) for the Moon Day contact.

For more information on ARISS, please go to our web site: www.ariss.org

The ARISS international team would like to thank our ARISS-Russia colleague, Sergey Samburov, RV3DR, for his leadership on this historic commemoration.

Frank H. Bauer, KA3HDO

ARISS International Chair