I’ve been plunking around with weather satellites again. I started with the NOAA weather satellites back in 2017 using my azimuth only Yagis and the IC-9100. Then in May 2020 I added an SDR receiver to the ham shack and tested it out on the NOAA satellites again.
This time I’ve added the NOAA SAWbird 137 MHz filter and LNA from Nooelec to go with their NESDR SMArt receiver. All that is operated by SDR-Console including their satellite window which handles the doppler correction and tracking. The amazing thing is how little this all costs with free software, $30 SDR, and $43 LNA. Well, then there is that fairly expensive antenna, the M2 Eggbeater Sat Pack.
This morning I’ve been receiving some of the satellite images of Hurricane Laura in the Gulf. You can see a closeup from NOAA 15 above with the full image in the gallery below. I’ve also added a later image from NOAA 18 as well as a screen shot from the SDR-Console software.
I’m enjoying this aspect of our hobby, what with six meters all quiet on all fronts. Next I’m looking into decoding Meteor M 2, which takes quite a bit more software to decode and process the much more detailed images. Fortunately, there is a great deal of information online. Just need to decipher it. If that proves possible, I may look into the GOES satellite at 1688 MHz. Yet another adventure.
[…] built in satellite tracking to record a few weather satellite images. You can find my write up at WX Satellite Update. I used NESDR’s NOAA SAWbird preamp along with an M2 Eggbeater antenna for 137 […]