Well, it’s not pretty, but I was just using a 17″ whip antenna on my VX-8GR, recorded it with Audacity, and then decoded it with MultiScan on my Macbook. The first bit of the recording is pretty rocky, so I had to start the sync myself. I’ve bean meaning to do some experiments with bad audio and sync recovery, now I have more data.

Oh, in case this was all gibberish to you, the Russians have been running “events” from the International Space Station to honor their cosmonauts by transmitting pictures via slow scan television (SSTV). I received this picture using what most people would call a walkie talkie, a whip antenna, and a laptop.

As decoded by Multiscan:

I thought a second image would have begun later in the pass, but didn’t hear it.

I think an antenna with a little more gain, and/or a preamplifier would help a lot. You really need pretty noise free audio to make a good picture. Still, a fun experiment. I might try the 12:30AM pass tonight.

Addendum: The second pass was also a little rocky. Got the tail end of one transmission fairly cleanly, but the three minute gap to the next one meant it was low. This is what I got.