For over a month, we have been attempting to TX and RX SSTV via PSAT2. We discovered on Bob’s APRS page that PSAT2 can support users sending and receiving SSTV as long as it detects PSK31 in the passband. While we were unable to get SSTV to work via PSAT2 and experimentations are still on going, we were able to successfully send SSTV from N8URE in Maryland to KO4AQF in Florida. This required dozens of cases of trial and error. We plan to publish the procedure in a future AMSAT journal article.

B/W SSTV: https://i.imgur.com/nFG6UII.jpg

B/W was easier to decode than color.

In addition to SSTV, we discovered that PSAT will also support waterfall drawing where the sound will draw the picture directly in the waterfall display. This provides evidence that when PSK31 is detected that PSAT transponder may become a bent pipe.

Waterfall picture https://i.imgur.com/4fdvib6.png

More experimentations are planned. We attempted to send Olivia however it was unable to be decoded. This may be due to the manual doppler being performed and / or fade due to the satellite.

In order to send PSK31 to PSAT, we used upwards of 100-200 watts on the 10m uplink. Downlink is UHF and must be Doppler corrected. You need a pitcher and a catcher. In this case, the catcher was manually adjusting for Doppler on a D72A using an Arrow antenna. Then the catcher used an iPhone Voice Memo app to record then playback the audio. It can be decoded using fldigi and SSTV can be decoded with your favorite sstv app.

I’d like to thank everyone who has helped us better understand and participate along the way. Bob, Brno University, KK4YEL, KI5HHK, and N8URE who did the heavy lifting of sending the data over the 10m uplink. Brno University was instrumental in providing the right technical details along with their github page for us to dial in our transmission.

More in depth technical details to follow

Signed,

N8URE KO4AQF KK4YEL KI5HHK