Owen Garriott W5LFL Memorial SSTV Images

Below are some images that were copied by the W2MMD Clubhouse satellite station from the W5LFL memorial SSTV project. Some were copied live from the satellite while others were recorded by the clubhouse station and the audio was uploaded to SatNOGS. I downloaded the SatNOGS audio and decoded it locally. 

This was an especially interesting session for me since I was involved in the first QSO with W5LFL's space shuttle mission. At that time no hams had ever had QSOs with any human who was in space, and a group over at the Franklin Institute gathered to try for a QSO led by Chief Astronomer Derek Pitts, KA3NQN (you probably know of him but didn't know that he was a ham) . Somehow I got enlisted to join them and we set up a station somewhere on the first floor. There was a lot of interest from the local TV stations and others, and Derek turned it into a great PR event for the Institute. We were unsuccessful for the first few tries, and one night I was unable to join them but was listening on my home station when I finally heard W5LFL come back to them. It was a short QSO but tremendously satisfying for that group.

Nowadays QSOs with the ISS are more common, particularly between astronauts and schools, but this QSO preceded the ISS. Owen was the first ham astronaut to have a QSO from space. It's great to be remembering him this way.








Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 13, 2019 at 12:12 PM

    My son KA9SXP and myself N0WAF are trying the GOES project. I got my raspberry pi this week and have it set up, waiting on your suggested antenna, next week. We are doing NOAA satellites now. I'm a new pi user so any further hints on commands would be helpful, I have a pi 4. File transfers from pi to pc info please. Thanks de N0WAF

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