NOOA 17 at 10.00 utc

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I have had a passion for tracking and receiving NOOA weather Satellites for a few years and have tried a few different antenna's along the way with some reasonable images being received. I have had the home brew IOIo beam up for the last two months and have been pleasantly surprised with its performance. The best way to ensure a clear image is achieved by having an almost inaudible sound level from the output of your radio to the sound card. In other words make sure the sound-in to your computer is set very low from the radio.

The software I have been running since 2004 is Radio Com 5.2 which has now been superseded by version 6.0. Radio Com 5.2 seems to work exceptionally well still, and I have had a lot of Radio Hams around the world getting in touch with me since they have watched the Weather Satellite videos I did for this site and Youtube.

A lot of other Hams told me that they were using WXtoIMG decoding software which allowed the user to play around with the received image and also add colour. The main concern using the WXtoIMG software was that the image quality was not so great compared to the images I had received using Radio Com. However it does work and can be downloaded free if you fancy trying it?

Radio Com 5.2 and 6.0 allows image manipulation and also provides a pallet of colours, which can be edited in once the image has been received and saved.

The only down side to Radio Com software is paying for it! The software gives you full rig control of two radios at the same time and multi mode decoding for just about everything from CW, PSK, SSTV to RTTY it has a built in digital filter as well as spectrum analyser. The actual screen is very pleasant to the eye and simple to use, however the program will not run without the Radio Com Dongle which is a serial type fitting to your computer.(Preventing any coping/pirating of the program).

Here is the Pass and course of NOOA 17 at 10.00 utc

Here is this mornings image from NOOA 17 showing North Europe to North Africa received on 137.620 FM.

I will be listening out for more passes whilst awaiting the solar cycle to provide some good propagation here in North England. So far a slow start!

73

Comments

mvandewettering said…
Nifty! I've been doing similar stuff for a while, using my Arrow antenna and recording satellite passes, and then using my own code to convert them into pictures. In the last week, I managed to get the sync detection code more or less working, and now I can produce pretty nice looking images. After cleaning up a few remaining bits of ugliness, I intend to make the code available under an open source license.

http://brainwagon.org/2008/11/07/in-my-copious-spare-time/

Mark KF6KYI
5:48 pm
MØYKS Simon said…
Hi there Mark, thanks for commenting. I am very impressed with your code and the image I saw at your site. (will be adding you to my links)

I enjoy this other side of radio sometimes a little too much h.i

I have been pleasently surprised with the IOIo beam as well as the Arrow antenna. Would love to put the Arrow up on the rotator but suffer from heavy wind, so will have to stick with my heavey duty IOIo and keep the Arrow for portable use.

Tnx agn and good luck with your research. Hope to hear more about it soon.

Regards de Simon
7:02 pm
Phaze58 said…
Iv'e got radiocom v6 and as soon as I get things up and running here @ home you can be sure I will be looking for some NOAA sats to track.
congrats Simon.
9:04 pm
MØYKS Simon said…
Nice one Phil. I hope to hear more about your progress and we will have to share our images etc. Look forward to playing some radio together soon.

73 and I'll listen out for you on 145.500
10:22 pm
Krishna Lekshmi said…
Nice blog! Interesting post!!

Regards,
SBL Photoshop Image manipulation
6:07 am
MØYKS Simon said…
Thanks very much, you're welcome!
4:06 pm
Kusuma Nastiti Ardiati(KNA) said…
your blog is good. my blog www.displaykayu.blogspot.com and www.batikklewer.com good luck
1:39 pm
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