Another satellite recording…

April 25, 2008 | Amateur Radio | By: Mark VandeWettering

I heard via the amsat-bb mailing list that RS-22 was still transmitting telemetry, but might be interrupted by low batteries during eclipse period. I haven’t tried to listen to any Russian satellites, so I thought I’d give it a try. My satellite prediction software yielded this data for this morning’s pass:

RS-22 will be visible from grid CM87ux starting in 00:00:26 at 17:39:54
  17:39:54  +0.1° 178.2° ? 12.7°N 121.5°W - AOS
  17:40:00  +0.4° 178.4° ? 13.0°N 121.6°W -
  17:41:00  +4.4° 180.3° ? 16.6°N 122.4°W -
  17:42:00  +9.3° 182.9° ? 20.3°N 123.2°W -
  17:43:00 +15.3° 186.7° ? 23.9°N 124.1°W -
  17:44:00 +23.5° 192.9° ? 27.5°N 124.9°W -
  17:45:00 +34.8° 204.8° ? 31.1°N 125.9°W -
  17:46:00 +48.2° 231.5° ? 34.8°N 126.8°W -
  17:46:39 +52.1° 261.9° ? 37.1°N 127.5°W - MAX
  17:47:00 +50.5° 278.9° ? 38.4°N 127.9°W -
  17:48:00 +38.1° 311.1° ? 42.0°N 129.0°W -
  17:49:00 +26.0° 325.2° ? 45.6°N 130.2°W -
  17:50:00 +17.3° 332.4° ? 49.2°N 131.6°W -
  17:51:00 +10.9° 336.7° ? 52.7°N 133.1°W -
  17:52:00  +5.9° 339.6° ? 56.3°N 134.9°W -
  17:53:00  +1.7° 341.7° ? 59.8°N 137.0°W -
  17:53:28  +0.0° 342.5° ? 61.5°N 138.1°W - LOS

So, I fired up my FT-817 and my digital voice recorder, wandered outside, and sure enough, picked it up easily. I recorded a bunch of it, and about 2/3 of the way through, realized i had my cables misrouted and I wasn’t actually recording. I shuffled quickly, and got a few code groups as it was Doppler shifting away.

RS-22 Telemetry (trimmed)