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What to listen to · Amateur radio
QO-100: SSTV pictures through the satellite on 10489.620 MHz
Slow-scan pictures through the geostationary satellite arrive without shortwave's noise bands. Around 10489.600 to 10489.620 MHz, in QO-100's mixed-mode segment, amateurs send images the program decodes line by line.
What you hear
The two-minute warble and ticking sync pulses of SSTV, explained in the SSTV article, on a path with no fading: the pictures come out clean from top to bottom, which on shortwave is the exception. The mixed-mode segment of the transponder runs from 10489.580 to 10489.650 MHz, and the pictures are most often found around 10489.600 to 10489.620 MHz. The satellite, its transponder and the dish receivers are described in the main article.
Who transmits and why
Amateurs across the footprint, Europe to India and Brazil, who enjoy that a picture sent with a few watts on 2.4 GHz comes back from space pixel-perfect. Activity is occasional rather than constant: a station announces a picture on the SSB segment, sends it, and friends reply with their own.
When and where to listen
Any hour, with the best chance in European evenings and at weekends. Only receivers with a dish on the satellite hear it, and the catalogue uses those.
In ShackDeck
Station catalogue → Amateur radio → QO-100 satellite: SSTV 10489.620. The program picks a receiver with a dish, tunes it to 10489.620 MHz in SSTV mode, handles the converter offset and runs the SSTV decoder: the picture builds on screen line by line from the audio, as on HF. If nothing is on exactly 10489.620, tune a few kilohertz down within the segment. No receiver, dish or account of your own is needed.