New APRS antenna

Now on Saturday just gone i managed to get the secondary Collinear X50 (2E0EMO-A5) of mine in place. With the help of my other half Zoe M6PIZ, we got a new coax feed pulled for the antenna. This antenna will be split between APRS and NOAA APT. By doing this it means i be able to have the Discone SE-900 (2E0EMO-A6) connected as well to help boost coverage.

NOAA19

So after a bit more experimenting here are two of the last passes by NOAA 19. These was taken 18/11/2013. This was on the UV-B5 handheld and my Discone SE900

NOAA19 @ 01:33

 NOAA19 @ 03:14

APT NOAA 18 satellite

So after a few weeks of working on my projects i had on the go i finally got the weather satellite down link to work on my radio. Now after a few goes i finally have some images from the NOAA 18 weather satellite. These was picked up on my SE900 discone scanner antenna. This was connected to a Baofeng UV-B5 radio. the radio is only a handheld radio but it picked up better than my Icom IC-F510. By connecting the radio to my computer via a 2.5mm to 3.5mm jack cable i can run wxtoimg to decode the images.

So here is the first images. The yellow + shows my home location. This is near London.

NOAA 18  17/11/2013 -  15:23:25 GMT

NOAA 18  17/11/2013 -  15:23:25 GMT

NOAA 18  17/11/2013 -  15:23:25 GMT

NOAA 18  17/11/2013 -  15:23:25 GMT

NOAA 18  17/11/2013 -  15:23:25 GMT

You may notice that some of the images have fuzzy lines across them. The way radio signals work sometimes a noise is picked up that causes the signals to get messy. This is a on going project so over time i will work to improve them.

Decoder offline

My APRS the will be offline for a few weeks as i do some work with radio that does the RX side.