I found out today that the International Space Station is running SSTV for about the next week, it had been some time since I’ve tried to receive any images.

Running through Oct 14, information is here: http://ariss-sstv.blogspot.com/2024/10/oct-2024-sstv.html

This is the first time I am going to attempt this using an RTL-SDR. I have a Comet discone antenna (DMN-D220R) attached to it. Whenever I involve a computer or raspberry pi and ham radio I use Linux, so in this case hooked up to a PC with Ubuntu on it. I had no problem getting gqrx setup with the RTL-SDR, but how to get qsstv to get the sound input was baffling me.

Thankfully, Pirates in Teepees had the solution: https://piratesinteepees.org/viewing-iss-sstv-images-using-gqrx-and-qsstv-and-rtl-dongle-on-ubuntu-20-20/ It looks like Pirates in Teepees has a lot of great ham radio content, so I’ll be checking them out more.

Turns out it is fairly easy to install Pulse Audio Control and create what is essentially a virtual audio cable between gqrx and sstv. No sound comes out of the computer speakers, and I can let it sit for when passes of the ISS come over.

I’ll start posting over the next few days the images I receive.