NOAA-19, Meteor-M N2 and the Thumbnet N3 SDR Nongle

Back in December 2016, Shaun Whitehead of ThumbNet sent me of their new rtlsdr-based N3 Nongles but I was too busy to do anything serious with SDR. Now that I got a 137 MHz turnstile antenna up for testing I had an obvious opportunity to try it with the weather satellites.

To recall the details of my setup, COTS turnstile antenna kit mounted close to the house with free view towards South-West and West. No LNA, antenna is connected to SDR using approximately 6 meters of good quality coax cable.

Turnstile antenna for 137 MHz mounted for testing

The first test I did was using a good NOAA-19 pass, resulting in a good image:

NOAA-19 orbit 41027 on 20170125 13:52:06 UTC (HVC)

Next, I tried receiving the Meteor-M N2 LRPT downlink also on 137 MHz and this too looked like a very good reception. Sadly, I have no decoder to actually decode the transmission… yet 😉

Meteor-M 2 received with a Thumbnet N3 Nongle

All in all, the ThumbNet N3 Nongle is a good receiver in the low price range.