Peter Goodhall, 2E0SQL - M3PHP » noaa http://www.m3php.com amateur radio blog everything everything from activities to moans. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:02:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 Reinstated QFH Weather Antenna http://www.m3php.com/2009/04/04/reinstated-qfh-weather-antenna/ http://www.m3php.com/2009/04/04/reinstated-qfh-weather-antenna/#comments Sat, 04 Apr 2009 16:31:59 +0000 Peter http://m3php.com/?p=295 After reconnecting up the weather satellite receiver (RX2) and connecting it up to the Diamond V2000 vertical to decode the NOAA APT satellite passes it was finally time to put a dedicated antenna back up, in the form of a quadrifilar helicoidal antenna (QFH) this antenna hasn’t been used in about 4 years so I was surprised it worked perfectly. the results from using the V2000 weren’t that bad it would decode passes just below Iceland down to the top of Spain.

QFH Weather Satellite Antenna

With the QFH its decoding from well above the top of Iceland all the way down to Algeria, and best of all the images are mostly noise free. the antenna is only about 10 feet off the ground attached to the rose arch in the garden.

You can have a look at the images at http://wx.prettygoodprojects.com/apt/daily/ their uploaded a couple of minutes after each pass automatically by the software.

]]> http://www.m3php.com/2009/04/04/reinstated-qfh-weather-antenna/feed/ 0 APT Weather Satellites http://www.m3php.com/2009/03/02/apt-weather-satellites/ http://www.m3php.com/2009/03/02/apt-weather-satellites/#comments Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:25:52 +0000 Peter http://m3php.com/?p=270 After about 3 years of not decoding APT weather satellite pictures, I decided 1 weeks ago to setup the Rig RIGSAT RX2 again and connected it up to the Diamond V2000, for the software I decided instead of using the Time-step software to use a free application called APT Decoder which can track, decode and process the satellite pass without any involvement from a human.

Afterwards it has the ability to upload the decoded image and provides an RSS feed which can be subscribed to, which is handy as you can view the image on any type of device as long as you have Internet access.

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After a week and a half of decoding the results have been relativity good considering its not using a crossed or QFH style antenna, images do have noticeable noise on them but there still usable. and the software has performed without any issues.

You can find the latest images at http://wx.prettygoodprojects.com/apt/daily/

]]> http://www.m3php.com/2009/03/02/apt-weather-satellites/feed/ 0 NOAA Geophysical Alert Message Via Twitter http://www.m3php.com/2008/12/17/noaa-geophysical-alert-message-via-twitter/ http://www.m3php.com/2008/12/17/noaa-geophysical-alert-message-via-twitter/#comments Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:55:57 +0000 Peter http://m3php.com/?p=232 Since yesterday I’ve started sending the NOAA WWV Solar flux, A & K Indexs over the micro commmunications tool Twitter using the @DXAnywhere account. The system automatically pushes out an up date every 3 hours and ten minutes.

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