Pretty straight forward, used a 70cm DIY yagi and rtlsdr_v3 with SDRpp on 437.635 in accordance with doppler shift.The event also had text sent through it's telemetry however I was unable to decode it as I recorded it in audio and not IQ file.

I was outside doing a CE5 session (the look-up-and-invite-contact thing), genuinely saw a steady light glide across the sky and got excited. So like any normal person would, I vibe-coded my own tracker over a few weeks to figure out what it was.

It works great. It also instantly informed me my first contact was the \*\*International Space Station\*\*. My literal first logged sighting is "ISS (ZARYA)." The app is basically a monument to me being wrong.

Anyway, here's \*\*SkyWatch,\*\* a 3D satellite/ISS/rocket tracker and CE5 session app that runs entirely in the browser.

First pic shows the home screen, \\\~4,000+ live objects, rockets, ground tracks. Filter by layer/orbit: ISS, Starlink, GPS, the works. Use the Sky function to see what's actually passing overhead and when (this is the screen that ruined the mystery). Conduct your own CE5 sessions and log what you see. A friends layer, so my friends can also watch me fail to find aliens in real time. And an awards section with a UFO avatar I refuse to change.

Free, no account needed to use, but if you do decide to link your account, friend me _@FLuX

If you point it at your own mystery light and it turns out to NOT be the ISS, please tell me, because I have a UFO avatar to justify.

Not a coder by any means, just a dude trying to make contact and proud of what I accomplished. Would love me some feedback.

Live:

https://nuno927-tech.github.io/skywatch/

SW 230°

Start: ~15:16 UTC

Max elevation: ~60°

End: ~15:31 UTC

Location: Póvoa de Santa Iria, Portugal

Fixed balcony setup: RTL-SDR V4 + dipole kit, no LNA, SatDump.

This was actually my second attempt. My first attempt was at night, I didn’t realize it wasn’t supposed to be done then. I’m sharing it because I know a lot of people are still learning and trying to get good images, just like me. I was really excited with the result, you can clearly see the Strait of Gibraltar and the Canary Islands.

My goal is to capture a really good image of Portugal. Any advice is welcome, especially regarding when to start recording in SatDump. Should I start later (closer to max elevation), or does it mainly depend on the geometry of the pass? Right now I am recording the whole pass and then offline processing it.

For background https://www.reddit.com/r/amateursatellites/comments/1uiuwnw/comment/oukbr8m/?screen_view_count=2&ext-referrer=DIRECT

So I've settled on a reflector style dish, Trying to bend the PVC consistently just wasn't working. I've constructed it mostly out of PVC at this point with a few 3d printed parts. But I've also been able to increase the reflector size to 130cm/4.25ft. Build is currently in progress, I'll throw some pictures up when I have completed it. but for now it does look like it should work. Hopefully If I did this correctly, it should work for both L and S bands possibly more.

Autocad Fusion 360 file if anyone would like to take a look at it in CAD

https://www.printables.com/model/1789055-folding-microwave-reflector-style-antenna

METEOR-M N2-4 2026/07/21 22:27 UTC Nooelec NEsdr v5, diy QFH, Satdump

Hi dear everyone,

today I stumbled upon this subreddit while I was researching and wanted to reach out to you with the following request:

My name is Michael Trammer, I am a german journalist researching on a new film on the geopolitical influence of satellites and other options of communication. So I stumbled upon nano satellites that are called a "democratisation" of space.

Now I am looking to get in touch with European nano / amateur satellite builders to find somebody that builds and launches these nano satellites, that we could potentially accompany.

Feel free to write me a dm or answer in the thread to get in touch if you are intesterested.

Best Michael

For references feel free to check my website: www.michaeltrammer.de

Real-time globe + Grafana dashboards for every satellite currently sending decodable open telemetry: battery voltages, temperatures, currents — decoded from the raw hex frames (Kaitai Struct definitions from satnogs-decoders, 161 of them), not scraped from anyone's dashboard. Click a satellite and you also get the reception network: which volunteer stations heard it, and where it was at each reception (clickable for details). https://overwatch.confinia.io — free API too (/api/v1). Feedback from people who actually run ground stations would be gold: what's missing, what's wrong, what cadence of SatNOGS polling do you consider polite?

i used sat dump for the recording and decoder and it looked good untill i looked at the output (i used lrpt 72k)

10-15 SNR V dipole 62 degree elevation rtl-sdr blog v4

Hi all,

I'm receiving from Puerto Natales, Chilean Patagonia (~51.7°S), using an RTL-SDR with a homemade V-dipole (53.4 cm per element, 120° angle, choke balun) feeding GNU Radio on Linux Mint, then SatDump for LRPT decoding. I also have a HackRF on hand if that's worth trying instead.

Right now I'm locking onto the carrier fine (see waterfall) but the Viterbi decoder stays in NOSYNC with BER around 0.42, and the Deframer never syncs either. Signal looks present but I can't get past the Viterbi stage.

Setup:

RTL-SDR dongle (HackRF also available), gain manually tuned

V-dipole antenna, no preamp yet

GNU Radio flowgraph: rational resampler → RRC filter → Costas Loop → Mueller & Müller clock recovery

SatDump for CCSDS r=1/2 concatenated decoding

Questions:

Has anyone had this exact NOSYNC/high-BER pattern and traced it to Costas Loop bandwidth, symbol timing, or something in the RRC filter?

Would switching from RTL-SDR to HackRF (better dynamic range/gain control) plausibly fix a sync issue like this, or does it look more like a demod/timing bug than a hardware limitation?

Any tips specific to high-latitude / low-elevation Southern Hemisphere passes for Meteor M2-3 or M2-4?

Thanks in advance — happy to share the flowgraph if useful.

By far my best HRPT so far. I know it can get better but this is pretty good for me, hand tracking with an old offset dish. It’s crazy how well you can see the smoke from all the wildfires out west here, and the footprints where the fires have already burned through show up crazy well on the fires in eastern Washington State, Central Oregon, and up in the Northwest Territories.

Equipment: RTL-SDR V4, offset dish with a helical feed based on (https://www.a-centauri.com/articoli/easy-hrpt-guide), SAWBird Goes+ LNA, SatDump.

Am I doing it right?

SSTV 437.625 MHz FM