Every once in a while, the International Space Station has an SSTV event. SSTV stands for Slow Scan Television. Essentially you’re receiving data as an audio stream from the station (similar to old dial-up modem sounds) and then you can convert that data into an image using a computer or smartphone. I used an app called Robot36 as the decoding app and another app called ISS Detector for determining when the station would be over my location.
I only found out about this event less than 24 hours before the end of it. Ran outside just as the ISS was sailing overhead last night and was able to receive image 8 of 12 (Apollo 8 50th anniversary) by holding my UV-5R’s speaker mic up to my phone running Robot36. As I had just downloaded the app a few minutes prior and didn’t have much of a chance to figure it out, I ended up losing the image when I closed the app (controls are a bit weird in the app).
I went outside again this morning ahead of when the ISS was supposed to be overhead. I managed to catch the tail end of image 4 and caught all of image 5, but again screwed that up. The app will auto-save the image at various times, but once it gets to the bottom of the screen, it will overwrite whatever came before it. So I ended up losing the top where it says NASA On The Air.
All in all, it was pretty fun.
Captured images are below:
maltosekincaid.com 
That’s super cool – I learned something today.