Testing Antennas For GOES Geostationary Weather Satellite
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- Опубліковано 1 лип 2024
- I've been trying to find a use for my ~30" parabolic dish, which is light enough to fit on an old motorized camera mount for aiming. After experimenting with a variety of center feeds, I was able to receive data from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) #16, with views of North and South America. I also played around with the big fold-up dish some more, it gets a better signal as it's much larger, but despite being "portable" it's still a little clumsy to work with.
The feed that worked best for my little dish turned out to be a miniature 3-element Yagi antenna made from wire scrap. The middle dipole is about 83mm total, the director was 66mm, and the reflector was 87mm. Each element was 22mm from the next.
As usual, I'm using an RTL-SDR Blog v3:
www.amazon.com/dp/B0BMKB3L47?...
And a Nooelec Sawbird+GOES Filter:
www.amazon.com/dp/B07K1M39H4?...
(As an Amazon affiliate, I receive commissions for any purchases at the above links).
I'm also using SDR++ (www.sdrpp.org/) and Satdump software (github.com/SatDump/SatDump)
Antenna SWR tuning is with a Nano-VNA V2: www.ebay.com/itm/353177205291
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its always a great day when he saves something for parts isnt it
I love these satellite videos so much. You have birthed a new hobby of mine. Thanks! :)
I love how passionate you are! Thank you.
You're the reason I got more into HAM and Wireless technologies. We all love and appreciate you.
Thanks! Everyone at work likes my OSHA Approved "totally safe" shirt.
Awesome!
Great work with that small dish and Yagi feed. I'm getting better at pulling HRPT from GOES 16, all thanks to your inspirational videos, it can be very difficult to get on target but my manual adjusting of my dish is paying dividends in getting low BER and improved SNR. Keep up the good work, it's helped me and I'm sure others considerably.
Those are some impressive images. If you ever do weather forecasts, i would definitely watch these :)
For the yagi, I think a ferrite on the pigtail to act as a balun might be necessary. I did this with my singular dipole feed and got much better signal.
Have you tried crossed dipoles? That's the typical LF dish feed I've seen... they need a ground plane of course. Also known as a turnstile antenna. You can make a double one also. Helical is another possibility... if the sat is not linear polarization you'll need to take that into account. Love this content, keep it going! My HOA rules were drawn up back when big dishes were the norm... I might be able to get away with a 10-12' dish!
GOES-16 HRIT data at 1964 MHz is linearly polarised, turnstile and helical antennas used for dish feeds are for circularly polarised signals.
@@ferrumignis Circular polarization is used for linear satellite reception in order to avoid cross-polarization loss. When you use your linear yagi to make a sat QSO you are twisting it to maximize reception, right? Circular polarization eliminates that need.
@@scowell Sure, if you don't care about the 3dB loss you can do it, and is does remove the need to twist the antenna to maximize signal.
Because of you I bought a UV-5R and was able to hear the astronauts on the ISS a couple days ago for the first time… you truly are inspiring my friend. Thank you for all that you do!
E.T. says, "Leave us alone!"
You’re channel is so cool! I like learning about this satellite stuff!!
Looking good dude! Love seeing the continued upgrades over time
Always enjoying the satellite and radio videos! 👍
Wow, great images! Way better than you were getting before.
Stellar photos of Earth. Loved your video : )
Thank you, I really appreciate your channel😃😃
Totally fuckin awesome man. Those images are the cleanest I've seen you pull yet. Great work.
I’m so happy I found this channel.
You give me way too many ideas! Keep it up!
Another great vid!
Great great work. Keep it up! Many thanks on showing what works and what doesn't. I am going to try that yagi and a direct tv dish and see what happens. Will report back.
I was on a business trip to Minneapolis last month and I got to experience the glory that is Ax-Man... I felt like I should drop your name seeing as you are such a great salesman for them. Thanks for the videos, always enjoy them and your wit.
Love the Stacksman beer - Eric.
These are fantastic results. Nice.
Also, I saw your videos years ago, only few. And I rediscovered your channels about 2 weeks ago. Now I am addicted to other Ham and SDR channels too. :D
Cheers.
Thanks! Glad you like it!
Hi Ya & best wishes. Thanks for work. Be Happy. Sevastopol/Crimea.
You should try using a fold up megaphone like we used in Force Recon and Navy Seals back in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. You can buy them pretty cheap if you find a Ham that still has one. You don’t need the entire megaphone, just the folding umbrella portion of the megaphone. I saw a Ham with one here in Honolulu just 3 years ago. WH6DWF🇺🇸
Nice! It's fun building antennas.
That's amazeballs.
Just love your enthusiasm! Keep discovering and taking us along for the ride! 73 - Dino KLØS
Weather Satellite is pretty cool, sweet video!
After just watching the flipper video, it made me think about scanning your nearby NOAA Weather Radio frequency, then doing something based on that. Perhaps like:
-if “TOR” or “SVR” begin countdown to local server and PC shutdown.
-sms or otherwise notify you with the link by finding it in the NWS or Iowa State Mesonet warning feed.
Assuming you can find SAME decoder software. There is a neat video on UA-cam if you look it up, though.
Sounds interesting!
I love such satellite videos!
You're starting to get pretty good at this
Just found your channel. Watched you pick up a Russian weather satellite, then came to your channel. Love it!
Well done.
Yay! Nicely done! 73, George M1GEO.
Very nice 👍
As a local fan of the show, I still have some cool things to offer.
Great video...👍
This was a good one :)
Nice video very help full, I just have to have patience and learn what I’m doing wrong
I love film slate! you’re a true professional. Any left? May have to venture out and buy one.
They probably still have some. Not too fancy, just plastic, but still kinda fun!
I also use my NanoVNA for SWR and find that you can get a more accurate SWR reading when you calibrate and narrow down the frequency range you want to check instead of using a wide frequency range.
Nice video
The video was as exciting as the series about the Skinwalker Ranch; the helicopter was already there, maybe there are still recordings of a UFO to be found. I've been thinking about the Yagi antenna all along; that's a very good idea. I'm already very excited about more videos.
Thanks!
We have a mutual friend and I'm really really hoping a group of us can connect somewhere in MPLS/STP for happy hour etc. I'd love to give you some additional gadgetry to play with!
Got my sdr kit through the affiliate link, we'll see how long this round of stock lasts, last one sold out on the first day! The kit is the V3 in case anyone was wondering (the v3 is better than the v4 as they ran out of the good chips for v4)
I just got a v4, haven't had time to try it yet!
@@saveitforparts I guess it's got some worthwhile upgrades like a better heat dissipation with the different chip (can be fixed with some thermal paste and a heatsink if there's concern), HF Upconverter, and better filtering
but it does come with the tradeoff of not being able to support your favorite YT creator!
Minnesota represent!
When you have a 1/4 wave monopole antenna the direction of the null is straight up. By pointing a monopole straight up at your dish you're pointing your null at the dish. It's the worst possible orientation for receiving signal. Put the monopole parallel to the dish, not perpendicular.
“If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.”
― Red Green
You should try decoding pocsag/flex pager signals!
Pringles cans are not actually coated with anything conductive. It just looks that way.
It comforts me that experimentation still has a place in this modern age...
That’s fucking sick I love all your videos about antennas and rf and …
That shot of the chopper made me laugh. Keep having fun. Leo 73
I would be interested in seeing you try a slot antenna on this setup.
Axe man is THE coolest store.
Nice sir ji 🙏
Did you clean the yard,lawns look nice 👍
The stick antenna needs to be rotated. The vertical element of the stick antenna should be parallel to the back of the dish (like the cantenna has), not at 90 degrees to it.
Cool hobby
The problem with the groundplane antenna is, it is radiating to the side and has a null point upwards in the radiation pattern. I don't think that's a good antenna for a dish feed.
Great results, very interesting! Cheers!
Great work and video. Where is the small Yagi put. There is not video of its placement. Thanks
I had it in the focal point of the dish, where the LNB would go for a TV dish or where the network antenna was on the smaller one.
I just picked one of these 5.8ghz dishes up, has holes around the edges for radomes. Attempting proba, but ive seen it just may not be on over me. I've been guessing the length of the feed horn based on what came with it
I use a 2.4 gig wi fi antenna from Amazon and the goes amp and a rtl dongle running on sat dump.
This is the most helpful video i have ever seen on Geo weather satellites ,i am using the ideas very much so the 1.7 GHZ yagi idea which i will try on my 2 M dish just to see if i can get the signals from 2 or 3 Geo weather sats we have in my part of the world which is Melbourne Australia . i know one uses the type of broadcasting that type of antenna can use . i was going to ask the length of the dipoles i see you have given but i was not sure if they were just one side of the dipole or the full length looking at it in your hand i think i got it right ...An idea i am using to make it neat is thin steel rods cut to size from an old desk draw and using 12 NY-LP Panel Mount Barrier Terminal Block those white things for power connecting with screws to hold the wiring tight ,the rods fit in the power blocks and just have to screw them tight the spacing for every second ( so dipole nothing dipole and remove the brass terminal for the unused one ) terminal block is correct for the dipole spacing in your video ...no glue needed . for the driven element i cut the brass connector in half so not shorted and i have soldered a wire either side out to its coax connector ...Yours is a wonderful solution for a smaller dish that can not use a can antenna due it its size on a small dish ...i want to use it on a smaller dish in time so its a great idea . I have seen some wide band 3d printable feeds for dishes that would make a great video to try it looks like a V with a few dipoles going up in length i suppose the same idea could be used for the Helical antenna wire with in wire just different coil size .
Interesting! I've tried a few random things for antennas and so far the little printed circuit board thing seems to work best for linear signals. I have a couple more videos like this, at some point I need to set up a big dish permanently!
I know your pain ! i moved down from up Sydney way down to Melbourne and i just could not get around to putting my dish up any where so ended up dumping it ! it killed me loosing my 3m dish but we were moving again and no room to put it and lug it around again just for storage 22 years later i now have the 2M mentioned , and guess what i am getting it up and running and the Wife is talking about moving again ! ARRRR If i were you i would put up the mesh dish laying next to your shed its strong bit easier to do stuff when you have something like that on a pole mount perfect for your Geo sat work the foldaway dish is great for the experimental work and the little one on the powered AZ EL tripod got me so interested in all this seeing that baby work reminds me of happy days in Sydney with my powered AZ EL 3M .
On the dish feeds i am trying your 1.7 GHz yagi idea first i just finished adding the LNA from 1990ish ~ ! never used in joy only took me over 30 years to play with it ! !the person that built if for me is long gone ! in those days the Geo weather sats were analog none of this digital stuff ! I can see the printed circuit board Yagi looks like a easy feed to try ,we have a 3D printer so i am getting my son to make me stuff after i see some results with this one
Fascinating stuff. Can you mount it on a railcar?
Hi Gabe - I enjoy your vids a lot. Have you ever thought about writing books? If you were to come out with a book about getting started with satellite reception I would definitely want a copy. From watching your vids on receiving weather and TV satellites I can tell you would be great at puting together a book like that.
I have a book I'm working on (when I have time), but it's a completely different topic!
The LNA and filter is a good combination. You never mentioned matching the illumination angle of the antenna to the f/d ratio of the dish. Over-illumination would significantly reduce your SNR.
What you need to do is set up the fixed c band dish your figuring what to use it for your goes weather station. I would like to see how much stronger the signal is with a mesh c band dish over the wi fi dish I'm using.
First of all Great video, then what software are you using as a calculator for the antenna?
I had some stuff online I was using, I think it was on sgcderek's page. I don't have that in front of me so I'll have to check later!
keep up the work you sexy clump of atoms
you need a sponsor or something Raid Shadows Legends??? i mean i would sit through it because your stuff is that good and you deserver it or at least some more beer while you wait around for things to happen hahhahah
from Australia M8
You have shown that antennas that fire towards the dish(yagi) work better than those that fire to the side(ground plane). If the material of the center support of that 30" dish is metsl or conductive it will seriously mess with the feed antenna.
Many thanks to share your work. Please, where did you found ''umbrella '' dish. I have not enough room. Thank's. Rémi
I got it from another Ham guy, I haven't seen too many of them for sale these days.
I'm not sure what you're doing for pointing the c-band, I know that when I was watching TV off of C-Band, oh some 30 years aog, aiming was done in 2 parts. One part was orienting the pivot of the antenna so that the dish would consistently point at the Clark Arc, (which bing at 45 (ish) degrees off the equator, means you don't just point the dish at 45 degrees off level, it needs to be pointing below that to hit the orbits at 23,000 miles out, as you are well aware) but once the pivot was oriented correctly, there was simply a linear actuator that would drag the dish around that pivot from east horizon to west horizon and back, with known markers for each satellite in the clark arc that was carrying c-band TV transponders. I presume that if you get this c-band pivot oriented properly, yo could just as easily set it up to grab 10-20 min of data off GOES E, then point to GOES-W, for 20 min, then back, with a couple of minutes at each re-aim to fine tune the aim.
As I recall, there were a couple of modifications that would allow you to grab DirecTV feeds with the C-Band dish. One mounted an DirecTV LB (Ku-band?) next to the C-band LNB, another did a full swap of the existing bi-polar lnb with a uni-polar lnb for c-band, and a unipolar LNB for DirecTV, and you just lived with the fact that when switching between od and even transponders, there was going to be a delay while the polarization was re-oriented.
Polarization might be something else to check on that new Yagi solution, Rigging up a stepper and rotary encoder (or high quality servo for viewers with a huge budget, I don't have that) to turn the yagi through 180 degrees, looking for peak signal or peak signals, then tracking that from endstop marks for best opportunities to re-hit that mark. or 3d print an LNB housing that has a built in thumb wheel rotator with a lock of some sort if you are setting up a permanent station somewhere.
And of course you could always set up a cloud service that hosts the past 48 hours of imagery, from wherever you end up with the best signal, and then you just pull the most recent of whatever image set you need wherever you have internet service. But that presumes that you'll have internet service, or you're not trying to show off how the data is collected. So have fun. :-)
And yeah, the video just dropped into my feed today. :-)
I've more recently mounted another C-band dish for GOES, it has a linear actuator but I think it's seized up. Also have another one that I'd like to motorize for two-axis pointing, so I can get stuff in weird orbits like Molinya and Low-Earth-Orbit. More stuff for the to-do list :-)
@@saveitforparts My experience on the c-band actuator was that it's effectively an all thread rod, attached to the drive motor, that turns in a not attached to the 'near' end of the inner shaft. that extends out. Depending on the drive mechanism, it could be a stepper motor or a dc motor, either with an encoder to indicate how the actuator is turning (or not.) Seized actuators either have corroded bolts and nuts for the actuator, or in some cases the all thread is no longer bonded to the drive mechanism. I recall that there was a grease fitting that had a label recommending annual servicing. I don't know if the attachment of the all thread to the drive is a welded fitting, or if they use a clamping mechanism like we see on lower end 3d printers z-axis.
As an observation, I'd suggest that using a DC motor for driving the actuator rather than a stepper. Definitely would need an encoder to learn how the movements are working, but you can do some of that in tracking signal levels of the satellite, and derive az-el changes from that, along with orbital elements of what you're tracking.I would imagine that one of the setup functions would be to start with 2 known geostationary satellites to get a fixed line and 2 fixed (sort of) points on the line for being able to move to where you expect the satellite to be tracked will be located. That gets a bit interesting if the signal ban you are going to be working with isn't the same signal band that the geostationary satellites are operating with.
In any case, keep having fun.
It’s a shame these dishes are not cheap in the UK as would love to have a go
Great video and info ! Space diversity ? Timothy Lipinski
Don't forget to like the video. Good Sat testing.
I think i know where that days worked without accident sign came from
хорошая работа
maybe try a slot antenna for the feed
I’m experimenting with the NOAA APT satellites and so far I get static and sometimes good images from that I guess my rubber ducky antenna sucks 😅
For some antenna designs just make a actual yagi to try,ring feed and a tiny egg beater antenna which is just like the qfh antenna with no phasing
Kinda curious what if you combine solar power with a satellite
Maybe try a helix feed for the dishes.
wait a sec, when did you get a dish rotor? nice! :)
I've had a crummy pan/tilt mount since my first satellite videos. It's just an old security camera part and barely holds up my dishes. I'm trying to get a better one!
Where did that az/el system come from. Looks like a good tracking system.
The white one is part of an old security camera. It doesn't work as well as I'd like, not enough range of motion.
I am using a similar dish and Goes+ LNA, RTL SDR v4 and satdump. I see the signal but satdump always says 0 SNR when I try either LRIT or HRIT. Am I suppose to use LO offset? I have satdump 1.2.0 and it looks different. Any chance you could do a detailed walkthrough for the pc setup?
How to broadcast by building our own little test radio station??
Milk crate laptop holders, now that's DIY!
Hah, well done.
Slot and Patch antennas...
Hmm makes me wonder how a mini 4 element moonraker would work out ( moonraker has 2 polarity connections 90 deg out of phase)
BTW point the driven elements towards the parabola and reflector towards space.
What’s the make and model of that 30 in dish?
Have you, by chance, tried picking up Les-1?
Not yet, but I have "zombie" satellites on my to-do list!
Technically you can take a selfie from outer space.
Does the signal frequency concentrate like a porabala concentrates sunlight?
The signal strength does, so you collect weaker signals over a wide area and concentrate them at the focal point.
AXEMAN!!!!
Are you using the goestools software or just sat dump and sdr++? I am having issues trying to install the goestools on my Pi4.Thanks for any help
Just SatDump and SDR++. Ive used GOEStools before and I'd use it if I were doing a long-term download, but this was just to test some things.
Any videos on building gmrs or ham antennas?
I don't think I have any videos on that yet. I do have a big UHF antenna I need to install, just haven't had time!