Decoding satellites from the PSLV 2018-004 launch

On Friday 12 at 03:59 UTC, a PSLV-CA launched from Satish Dawan Space Centre, India, to deliver Cartosat-2F, as well as some smaller satellites, into a Sun-synchronous polar orbit. Cartosat-2F is an Earth observation satellite for cartographic applications. The ride was shared by several Amateur satellites: FOX-1D, which is AMSAT-NA‘s third 1U FM cubesat, and the first one supporting the L/V mode (as well as the usual U/V mode); PicSat, a 3U cubesat from the Observatoire de Paris designed to observe the Beta Pictoris star system, which also carries a V/U FM transponder for Amateur use; CNUSail-1, a solar sail demonstrator 3U cubesat from Chungham National University, South Korea; CANYVAL-X 1 & 2, a system from Yonsei University, South Korea, consisting of a 1U and a 2U cubesat in formation flight which form a virtual telescope (with the light focusing unit in one cubesat and the detector in the other); KAUSAT-5, a 3U infrared Earth observation cubesat from Korea Aerospace University; and STEP Cube Lab, a 1U cubesat from Chosun University, Korea. There were also several non-Amateur small satellites in the launch.

On Saturday 13 morning, at 09:54:46 UTC, I did a recording of the 70cm Amateur satellite band to try to receive and decode all these satellites. I used a 7 element handheld yagi from Arrow and a LimeSDR directly connected to the antenna with a short coaxial cable. My location was approximately 40.5961º N, 3.6963º W, 700m ASL (locator IN80do). The recording is IQ at 4Msps, centred at 436.5MHz, and lasts 8 minutes and 4 seconds. Here I detail my analysis of the recording.