A few months ago I started looking at various options for omnidirectional antennas with circular polarization for satellite communications. I came across the TA-1 137 MHz turnstile antenna from Wimo, which looked like an interesting option for a reasonable price.
weather
Daily NOAA weather satellite images
Two months ago I hooked up my VHF satellite receiver to the SatNOGS network. Since then, the receiver has been receiving many different satellites, including APT images from NOAA 15, 18 and 19.
Meteor-M N2 LRPT downlink
Tonight I tested the turnstile antenna and Airspy on the Meteor-M N2 LRPT downlink signal. It was a good, high elevation pass and it looks like the signal is strong enough to decode the transmitted images.
My first weather satellite images with a 137 MHz turnstile antenna
Some time ago I got a 137 MHz turnstile antenna from Jørn OZ6TA. We decided to build an automated NOAA weather satellite image receiver using a modern SDR device. He also had an Airspy he wasn’t using and so it became the SDR radio we were going to use for this.
NOAA APT reception with Gqrx and rtlsdr
About a year ago I posted a step-by-step guide about how to receive NOAA APT weather satellite images using Gqrx SDR and the Funcube Dongle. Today, I tried to repeat the procedure using my ezcap eztv666 rtlsdr dongle with very good results.
Simple APT decoder prototype
I have wanted to implement a simple APT decoder for the NOAA weather satellites in GNU Radio for quite some time now, in particular since the USRP equipped with a TVRX or WBX daughterboard and a GNU Radio FM receiver can be an extremely good receiver for this purpose. Today I have spent some time looking at the details of decoding APT and actually ended up with a working prototype implemented using the GNU Radio Companion.
NOAA 18 and 19 APT images Sunday, 17 Oct 2010
A few APT images received from NOAA 18 and NOAA 19 yesterday. THe setup I used was the very same that I have described earlier. Click on images to see full resolution and image details.
More NOAA APT Images with GNU Radio, URSP and WBX
Last weekend I wrote about my spontaneous experiments with receiving and decoding APT transmissions from NOAA polar orbiting weather satellites. This weekend I decided to extend the experiments by trying to receive at very low elevations and get images from far away.
NOAA Weather Satellite Reception with GNU Radio and USRP
This weekend I ended up receiving APT signals from NOAA polar orbiting weather satellites. I only wanted to explore IQ data recording and playback with GNU Radio but when I first used NOAA 15 as test signal and saw what I could receive I got slightly distracted from my original plan.