ISS Amateur Radio Status: March 11, 2008 By Miles Mann WF1F,
MAREX-MG News www.marexmg.org
Manned Amateur Radio Experiment
Slow Scan TV from Space Station Mir, 10 years later.
On December 12, 1998 the crew members of the Russian Space station Mir activated the Marex SSTV system. Over the next two years the system broadcasted over 20,000 SSTV images back to earth via Amateur Radio.
Many of the images were quiet spectacular.
To celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the successful imaging project, the Marx team is planning on upgrading our web page system to accommodate the many images that were transmitted during the projects 2 year run. In 1998 we just did not have the resources in place to handle the hundreds of images coming in every day. As a result only a small select on of the images were ever posted for public enjoyment.
Here is where we need your help. Out of the 20,000 images sent to earth, we believe that only approximately a 1,000 images were saved by the general amateur radio public around the world. We would like you to search your disk drives for those images that you received during the project which ran from December 1998 until 2000. Please send the images to Marex so that we can add them to our new web page.
We are interested in high quality and unique images.
In December 98 and January 99, there were many times when the Mir crews would put on Slid shows for the public and demonstrate the Musical skills and show us scenes of the holidays.
One good string of images came from the Mir shutdown in August 1999. The Mir crew left the SSTV system running showing inside shots while the crew packet up the Space Station just before leaving the station.
So start searching your disk dive and see if you can find some good images.
When you find them please send the Marex and will add them to our web page. Here are a few scattered pages with some of the Mir SSTV images
http://www.marexmg.org/imagessstv/SpaceCamImages1.htm
Images and links for SSTV images from Mir 1998-2001 http://www.marexmg.org/moscow98/index.htm
If you have any more that are different or have better quality, please forward those images to Marex. Mail your images to Marex at:
In order to properly catalog the images we request that you use the following image naming format. After you receive you images, please rename the images using the following format, All Lower case letters.
Year 99, Month 07, Day 31, (UTC time), Call sign, .jpg
In many cases you many not know the exact date or UTC time. Sometimes you can derive this information from the time stamp of the original image. Just take your best guess on the date and time.
Example:
New format: 9907311905wf1f.jpg
If we break this down Year =99 Month = 07 Day = 31 Time = 1905 UTC Call sign = wf1f Image format = jpg
Image Quality Please do not put any text over lays on the images, Example, do not put web page or advertisements in the image.
We would also like to know the following Optional information in your email.
Name or Call sign Country / State Receiver Software decoding tool Elevation or range of ISS when you decoded the image.
If you are interested in learning more about Slow Scan TV, here are a few links. SSTV Decoding Software http://www.barberdsp.com/
There are many choices in SSTV software, some Free, others with more features cost a few bucks. http://www.marexmg.org/fileshtml/sstvlinkpage.html
SSTV on ISS: The Marex SpaceCam1 is currently on ISS. It was successfully tested in August 2006 using a “Borrowed” laptop. The laptops computers are in very short supply on ISS. We are patiently waiting permission to Borrow another laptop.
ARISS Web page and other great Space projects http://www.rac.ca/ariss/
73 Miles WF1F MAREX-MG
Until we meet again
DOSVIDANIYA Miles WF1F
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