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Many people with an RTL-SDR have had fun receiving NOAA and METEOR low earth orbit (LEO) weather satellite images. However, a step upin difficulty is to try and receive the geostationary orbit (GEO) weather satellites like GOES. These satellites are locked to a fixed position in the sky meaning there is no need to do tracking, however since they are much further away than LEO satellites, they require a 1m+ satellite dish or high gain directional antenna to have a chance at receiving the weak signal. The GOES satellites transmit very nice high resolutionfull disk images of the earth, as well as lots of other weather data. For more information see this previous post where we showed devnulling’sGOES reception results, and this post where we showed @usa_satcom’s presentationon GOES and other satellites.
Over on his blog and Twitter account (@lucasteske) Lucas Teske has been documenting his work in building a GOES receive system. The SDR he uses mostly is an Airspy, but recently he showed that our RTL-SDR Blog V3 dongle is also capable atreceiving the GOES signal.
So V.3 Dongle from @rtlsdrblog can receive #GOES13 just fine. Although Airspy does have a better performance. pic.twitter.com/mXCFmgM3WW
— Lucas Teske (@lucasteske) October 25, 2016
The nice thing about Lucas’ post is that he documents his entire journey, including the failures. For example after discovering that he couldn’t find a 1.2m offset satellite dish which was recommended by the experts on #hearsat (starchat), he went with analternative 1.5m prime focus dish.Then after several failed attempts at using a helix antenna feed, he discovered that his problem was related to poor illumination of the dish, which meant that in effect only a small portion of the dish was actually being utilized by the helix. He thentried a“cantenna”, with a linear feed inside and that worked much better. Lucas also discovered that he was seeing hugeamounts of noise from the GSM band at 1800 MHz. Adding a filter solved this problem. For the LNA he uses an LNA4ALL.
To position the antenna Lucas used the Satellite AR app on his phone. This app overlays the position of the satellite on the phone camera making it easy to point the satellite dish correctly. He also notes that to improve performance you should experiment withthe linear feeds rotation, and the distance from the dish. His post of full of tips like this which is very useful for those trying to receiveGOES for the first time.
In future posts Lucas hopes to show the demodulation and decoding process.
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Related posts:
- Setting up an RTL-SDR based APT/Meteor Satellite Weather Station Receiver
- NOAA Weather Satellite Antenna and Software Guide
- A Tutorial on Decoding NOAA and Meteor M2 Weather Satellite Images in Ubuntu
- Video Tutorial: Setting Up Satellite Tracking with SDRSharp and Orbitron
- Tutorial Video Showing How to Receive Meteor M2 Weather Satellite Images with the RTL-SDR
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Allen
5 years ago
#115574
What are you using for the antenna element, I didn’t see any pictures of it. I’m interested in getting GOES 16 satellite images. I have the dish and software and using the RTL-SDR
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Juanro
7 years ago
#82198
Meteosat-10 (MSG-3) on 0ºW/E is operational in LRIT 1691 Mhz. Images not encrypted at 02:45, 05:45, 08:45, 11:45, 14:45, 17:45 20:45 and 23:45 UTC. To receive the signal directly you will have to have at least one satellite dish prime focus or offset 1.3-1.8m, a feeder for 1691 Mhz, BPF filter, LNA, Airspy receiver and LRIT program to decode.
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Here are talking L-band, no UHF, let alone DCP interrogation that has no interest to us.
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Juanro
Reply toR vd Meer
7 years ago
#82189
Do not bother, Meteosat its LRIT is encrypted.
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AD5NL
Reply toJuanro
7 years ago
#82191
Are you sure all of the products are? Google tells me that once every six hours it’s unencrypted.
Also, the Western part of Europe ought to be able to see GOES East, no?
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AD5NL
Reply toAD5NL
7 years ago
#82192
Are you sure all of the products are? Google tells me that once every three hours it’s unencrypted.
(See the current Meteosat 10 Direct Dissemination Scheme documentation).
Also, the Western part of Europe ought to be able to see GOES East, no?
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Juanro
Reply toAD5NL
7 years ago
#82196
The direct signal GOES-13 (East) does not reach even to Spain, see Satellite Field of View: https://www.wmo-sat.info/oscar/satellites/view/149
Meteosat not directly emit such a service, it does through the EUMETCast called Ku-band DVB and payment: http://www.eumetsat.int/website/home/Data/DataDelivery/EUMETCast/SystemDescription/index.html
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Juanro
7 years ago
#82153
Service Frequency Bandwidth Polarisation Data rate Comments
——- ——— ——— ———— ——— ——–
CDA 1676 MHz 5000 kHz linear 2620 kbps Raw data
CDA 1676 MHz 5000 kHz linear 2620 kbps Raw data
PDR 1685.7 MHz 4000 kHz linear 2110 kbps Processed images/soundings
PDR 1685.7 MHz 4000 kHz linear 2110 kbps Processed images/soundings
LRIT 1691 MHz 660 kHz linear 128 kbps Selected data
MDL 1681.478 MHz 200 kHz linear 100 kbps Multiuse Data Link
MDL 1681.478 MHz 400 kHz linear 100 kbps Multiuse Data Link
DCPR 1694.5 MHz 150 kHz linear 0.100 kbps DCP report relay
DCPR 1694.8 MHz 150 kHz linear 0.100 kbps DCP report relay
DCPR 1694.5 MHz 150 kHz linear 0.300 kbps DCP report relay
DCPR 1694.8 MHz 150 kHz linear 0.300 kbps DCP report relay
DCPR 1694.5 MHz 150 kHz linear 1.200 kbps DCP report relay
EMWIN-N 1692.7 MHz 25 kHz linear 9.6 kbps Information
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Juanro
7 years ago
#82152
The polarization of geostationary meteorological satellites is linear. No circular.
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Not all of the transmissions. But indeed LRIT signal is linear. Just keep in mind that a circular polarized feed can receive linear signals just fine.
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Just take a look here, some of the signals are RHCP https://www.wmo-sat.info/oscar/satellites/view/149
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Juanro
Reply toLucas Teske
7 years ago
#82190
Here are talking L-band, no UHF, let alone DCP interrogation that has no interest to us.
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