DO-IT-YOURSELF: PROJECT
EF Y
Set Up Your Own WEATHER SATELLITE
RECEIVING STATION
W
e are all familiar with the
earth images of clouds
and hurricanes taken
from the earth-orbiting satellites in
our daily weather forecasts. With
the modern technology and internet
connectivity, now a days, such im-
ages are accessible to any individual
at the click of a button, or even
through apps on mobile phones.
However, such images are provided
either by government agencies or
commercial outlets that offer greater
details for the weather forecasters.
Often the images come from
geostationary satellites that send the
high-speed data at microwave fre-
quencies in the range of 3 to 4GHz
in C-band, or even higher frequen-
cies. Thus, the actual antenna and
RF electronics at these microwave
frequencies is a limiting factor for a
common experimenter. Besides spe-
cial design skills and expertise in the
RF and microwave domain, authori-
sation or licensing is also needed to
receive such data or signals.
There are, however, some satel-
lites that provide good-quality weath-
er images of a particular location on
earth, which can be freely used for
one’s own good purpose. The images
shown in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 were re-
ceived from such satellites. Although
these are not very high resolution im-
ages, they are sufficient for keeping
track of the weather and cyclones for
an individual experimenter.
The present technology and
software tools that are available as
freeware can be used to set up one’s
own weather satellite receiving sta-
tion. This article will help you set
up one such station for yourself.
54 JANUARY 2022 | ELECTRONICS FOR YOU
PRASANNA WAICHAL
Fig. 1: A high-resolution (1km per pixel) image received from
Meteor-M2 satellite by the author
Fig. 2: An image from NOAA15 with some graphics overlay are often non-stationary—or
The basic system
Let us first have a view of the basic
system configurations and the type
of satellites we can connect to for
this purpose. Fig. 3 shows the basic
block diagram of a satellite receiving
station. Obviously, we need a good
antenna, a receiver, and a computer
to run the image decoding software.
But what’s important is to know the
satellites that can be used for this
purpose. Let’s find out!
There are primarily, three types of
artificial satellites that orbit the earth.
Let us try to understand them.
GEO satellites. Geosynchronous
Earth Orbit (GEO) satellites have
an orbit of around 36,000km above
o
i The
San
the earth’s surface. These
rotate at the speed of earth
and thus appear to be station-
ary when viewed from earth.
The GEO satellites cover
one-third of the earth and
are often equipped with very
high resolution multi-spectral
imagers operating in optical
to microwave (radio) wave-
lengths. Since these satellites
are stationary relative to earth,
it is possible to use high-gain
parabolic antennas on earth
to receive their microwave
signals (refer Fig. 4).
MEO satellites. Medium
Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites
have an orbit of 10,000 to
15,000km, in between the GEO
and LEO satellites in height.
LEO satellites. Low Earth
Orbit (LEO) satellites have an
orbit of 800 to 1600km and
at least they orbit in the sun-
synchronous polar orbits and typi-
cally have on orbital period of 90 to
100 minutes. Polar orbit and tracking
antenna are shown in Fig. 5.
The National Oceanic and Atmos-
pheric Administration (NOAA) of the
USA operates a series of such polar
orbiting weather satellites. Of prime
focus for us are the NOAA-15, NOAA-
18, and NOAA-19 that are currently
operational. These satellites transmit
low-resolution, typically 4km-per-
pixel, 8-bit image data.
The signals are transmitted in
what is called Automatic Picture
Transmission (APT) protocol in an
audible tone with standard frequency
modulation (FM) at a carrier in the
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 DO-IT-YOURSELF: PROJECT
137MHz band. All image
data from the infrared
and near-visible range
imagers on-board these
satellites is transmitted
along with the necessary
telemetry and sync sig-
nals in the same audio
signal, and this is termed
as Analogue Transmis-
Fig. 3: Basic system requirements
sion. We shall receive
the weather images from
these satellites for this
project.
A satellite from Rus-
sia, named Meteor-M-2,
in the polar orbit trans-
mits weather images at
Fig. 4: Geosynchronous satellite orbit and antenna position even higher resolution in
the same 137MHz band.
But it uses digital QPSK
Fig. 5: Polar orbit and tracking antenna
Fig. 8: The Vee-dipole antenna
Fig. 6: The quadrifilar helical (QFH) antenna
Fig. 7: The turnstile antenna Fig. 9: The mounting and mechanical assembly details of the Vee-dipole
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modulation, so requires a special de-
modulator to reconstruct the images
from the digital data transmission.
Practical system build-up
Antenna. As stated earlier, the satel-
lites we are interested to receive are
the NOAA-15, NOAA-18, and the
NOAA-19 that transmit the images on
137MHz VHF band with a frequency
modulated (FM) audio informa-
tion using the APT protocol. Details
about this protocol are given in later
part of the article.
NOAA-15 transmits at
137.6200MHz, NOAA-18 at
137.9125MHz, and NOAA-19 at
137.100MHz with a carrier deviation
of ±17kHz. Thus, a receiver of at
least 40kHz bandwidth is needed.
Also, this transmission uses the
right-hand-circular-polar-
isation (RHCP) at the satel-
lite antenna. Eventually,
you shall theoretically re-
quire a circularly polarised
antenna at the receiving
end too. Alternately, if you
use a linearly polarised an-
tenna, only half the power
is received because only
one component, horizontal
or vertical, is sensed by
the linear antenna.
The QFH antenna.
Quadrifilar Helix Antenna,
or simply QFH antenna, is
the right choice for circu-
larly polarised signal. But
ELECTRONICS FOR YOU | JANUARY 2022 55

when it comes to construction of
this antenna, it is difficult to find its
proper construction details. Further,
when you have enough information
to start building the antenna, the
availability of material locally and at
Fig. 10: Vee-dipole (left) and turnstile (right) antenna mounted on the poles
Fig. 11: Typical BNC type connectors: BNC-to-
SMA adaptor (left), BNC female socket (centre),
and BNC male plug/header (right) used for the
cable assembly
Table 1
parts list
Item
6mm aluminium tube
General-purpose PCB/plastic box (50mm x 75mm x 25mm)
BNC female header (optional) panel type or PCB type
BNC male plug (cable type)
BNC female plug (cable type)
SMA male-to-BNC male adaptor for receiver
SDR receiver (RTL-SDR or RSP1A)
RG6 or other 75-ohm coax cable
M3 x 15mm screws
M3 hex nuts
M3 x 20mm self-tapping screws
1.27cm PVC plumbing pipes (3 to 4.5 metre feet heigh)
Miscellaneous hardware/fitting items
56 January 2022 | Electronics For You
do-it-yourself: project
affordable cost is a big problem. If The turnstile antenna. The next
you decide to use the material avail- alternative is the turnstile antenna. It
able in your junk-yard, you cannot utilises two linear dipoles placed at
be sure about performance of this 90 degrees or at right angle to each
antenna. So, better to be cautious. other, with one dipole connected
The QFH antenna is shown in Fig. 6. to the necessary 90-degree phasing
cable (quadrature connection). This
antenna is simpler to construct as it
uses only two linear dipoles. How-
ever, it has poor near-the-horizon
performance, which is required to
pick up satellite signals from the
horizon or low elevation angles.
The author tried one such combi-
nation and found that it offers higher
signal gain, hence higher image
quality, but only in the ±30 degrees
field-of-view (FoV) about the verti-
cal, that is, 120 degrees in total and
only when the satellite is overhead
and has lesser gain. Almost no im-
age data could be seen near the hori-
zon angles. The turnstile antenna is
shown in Fig. 7.
The Vee-dipole antenna. The
simplest form of the antenna is the
V (or Vee) dipole, which is just an
extension of the single linear dipole.
In fact, the two quarter-wave sec-
tions of a linear dipole are placed
or mounted at an angle of 120
degrees as against 180 degrees for
the straight linear dipole. You can
Fig. 12: Receiver RSP1A from SDRPlay (left) start with this simple but effective
and RTL-SDR dongle V3 (right); cable assembly
and BNC-to-SMA adaptor are in the fore antenna. The author had a linear di-
pole primarily optimised and tested
for the 2m (144MHz) amateur radio
band centred at 145MHz.
So, you can begin by construct-
Needed
ing this V-dipole. The 137MHz
1x1.2 metre
band and the satellite frequencies
1 range from 137.1MHz all the way
1 to 137.9125MHz. Let’s assume
1 137.5MHz as the central fre-
1 quency. The free-space wavelength
1 is 2.1818m at this frequency, the
1 half-wavelength is 1.09m, and the
10-15 metre quarter-wavelength is 0.54545m.
4 You shall require a 6mm (approx-
4 imately ¼-inch) diameter aluminium
2
tube of 1.2m length, which can be
obtained from a local hardware shop
1-2
at very low cost. Cut the tube into
two 60cm long identical sections.
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Fig. 13: The dashboard of the SDRUno GUI for the RSP1A software-defined radio
Fig. 14: SDR# software dashboard for the RTL-SDR V3 USB dongle
At one end of each of these sec-
tions, drill two 3mm diameter holes
as shown in Fig. 9. Leave the 60cm
length of these two sections as it is at
this stage. We shall adjust the length
to optimum value at a later point of
time.
It is strongly recommended to
use a general-purpose PCB or any
other plastic insulating material or
box to mount these dipole elements
for better mechanical stability and
protection from the weather and
dust/moisture. The exact dimensions
and construction details are shown
in Fig. 9. The author terminated the
connections to the dipole elements
into a BNC header suitably mounted
on the PCB but a panel mount type
would also serve the purpose.
Cable connections. Since this
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linear dipole offers impedance of
about 72 ohms, the commonly
available 75-ohm co-ax cable used
for satellite television can be used
here. You may need about 12 metres
of length. You can choose as per
your needs but do not exceed 15
metres to avoid significant signal
losses due to the cable. Terminate
one end of this cable into BNC male
plug and the other end into a BNC
cable-type socket. Refer Fig. 11 for
details. These are easily available in
local electronics/CCTV shops. Also,
as can be seen in Fig. 9 and Fig.
10, the coax cable is coiled into 3-4
turns near the antenna. This acts as
a balun to take care of impedance
transformation/matching.
Antenna mount. After your an-
tenna (dipole) assembly is complete,
it is time to mount it on the mast.
Theoretically and ideally, we need
the antenna mounted as high as
possible. But there are two limiting
factors. First, as stated above, is the
cable loss. And the second is the cost
of material for the mast and eventu-
ally the mechanical stability against
winds. The author used just a ran-
dom length of about 210cm that was
available as two surplus 1.27cm dia
PVC pipes left over after household
plumbing work. See Fig. 9 and Fig.
10 for an idea about the mast. The
author had the benefit of a rooftop
two stories high.
You are at liberty to choose your
own material for the mast as long
as it is insulating and stays within
your budget. One final word—place
this antenna away from power lines
and other sources of electrical or
RF interference. Any kind of electri-
cal noise or interference affects the
image quality—sometimes no data
at all!
Low noise amplifier (LNA). This
is the antenna front-end amplifier
that raises the signal level by 10 to
20dB. At the beginning stage you
need not use an LNA, but it will be
useful for receiving the high-quality
images from the Russian Meteor
M2 satellite. The satellite transmits
weather images in the same 137MHz
band at 137.100MHz (as received
by the author) but not in the ana-
logue APT format. It uses QPSK
modulation, with symbol/data rate
is at 72kbps, and requires different
demodulation approach.
So, for the moment, the LNA is
optional. It can however be con-
structed on your own or bought
off-the-shelf. The author built one
such LNA, which is under evaluation
and testing. A significant cost gets
involved with this as microwave/RF
components are required to achieve
the desired performance.
Receiver. After the antenna, the
main part of the receiving station
is the receiver. There are affordable
wideband software-defined radio
ELECTRONICS FOR YOU | JANUARY 2022 57

Fig. 15: Screenshot of WXtoImg when a satellite image is being received
Fig. 16: The virtual audio cable software
Fig. 17: The system sound settings and connections from the receiver output to virtual audio cable
FREEWARE SOFTWARE REQUIRED FOR THIS PROJECT
Functionality
APT Satellite Decoding
Software/Virtual Audio Connections
Satellite Pass/Trajectory Prediction
58 JANUARY 2022 | ELECTRONICS FOR YOU
DO-IT-YOURSELF: PROJECT
(SDR) available as USB dongles.
These not only offer reception of the
broadcast AM/FM bands but a wide
coverage from the LF/MF to frequen-
cies as high as 1.7 to 2GHz, depend-
ing upon the device. One commonly
used is the RTL-SDR RTL2832-Ver3
USB dongle that can be purchased
from e-commerce websites. Alter-
nately, there is RSP1A from SDRPlay,
but at a higher price tag.
The RTL-SDR dongle uses 8-bit
ADC while the RSP1A has a powerful
14-bit ADC. The performance differs,
so does the pricing. It differs largely!
Therefore, it is up to you to select
as per your budget. The author uses
both—RSP1A for the NOAA satellites
and RTL-SDR for the Meteor-M2.
These USB SDRs come with their
own user interface, but that only
allows you to operate the radio in a
conventional manner like tuning to a
particular frequency, setting receive
mode such as AM, FM, DSB, CW or
USB/LSB in case of single side band
reception and bandwidth controls,
etc. See Fig. 12 for receiver hard-
ware/devices.
You can explore the software of
your choice with the help of the user
guide. We shall here focus more on
utilising this radio (SDR) to receive
the weather satellite signals and use
related software tools to decode the
images. The screenshots of the GUI-
dashboards of these SDR receivers
are shown in Fig. 13 and Fig. 14. You
can get acquainted with the software
by receiving standard broadcasts
before proceeding further for the
weather satellite reception as there
are other set of software (as ex-
plained later in the text) required for
decoding the images and converting
the data into image files.
TABLE 2 Software. Besides the SDR soft-
ware, you shall require a few more,
as summarised in Table 2.
Suggested Option Website
Decoding software. The most pop-
WXtoImg https://wxtoimgrestored.xyz/
ular and easily available as freeware
VB-Cable https://www.vb-audio.com/index.htm
is the WXtoImg software for decoding
Orbitron http://www.stoff.pl/ APT transmissions. This software not
GPredict http://gpredict.oz9aec.net/
only records the audio received from
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the satellite as a ‘wave’ file (.wav)
but also displays the raw image
while decoding, and further displays
more images after processing the
raw data once the satellite pass has
been completed. Use the licensed
freeware version only, until you are
ready to purchase the full-featured
licensed version. In the author’s
view, the basic freeware is sufficient
for an individual experimenter. Refer
Fig. 18: Sound Setting option under the WXtoImg Decoding Software
Fig. 19: Checking the sound setting using actual satellite recording menu and ‘Manual’ settings
Fig. 20: Image cannot be reconstructed if audio connections are not proper
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the screenshot in Fig. 15. Visit the
website https://wxtoimgrestored.xyz/
for downloading and details about
this software.
Virtual audio cable. A point to
keep in mind is that the receiver
software (like SDR# or SDRUno)
functions separately and demodu-
lates the RF signal and then pro-
duces the audio signal from the FM
transmission. The decoding software
(like WXtoImg) expects the audio
signal to be fed for the recording and
processing of the audio and convert it
into the image.
In older days we used to connect
the audio cable (called patch-cord)
from the output of the receiver to the
input of the recorder. Now, since our
receiver is a software-defined radio,
and all the demodulation and audio
recovery related work take place in
the software, we need a ‘soft-cord’ to
connect the output of the receiver to
the APT decoder software. For this,
besides various options, the author
used the VB-Cable as a freeware
version. Details and software down-
load can be found at https://www.
vb-audio.com/index.htm
Follow the installation guide for
this virtual audio cable very carefully.
Once the installation is complete,
check in the audio settings of your
computer; the virtual cable would
be visible and available for setting as
shown in Fig. 17. Next, depending on
your PC’s sound configuration, select
the Audio Out from the receiver to the
Input of this cable as shown below:
Receiver Audio Output→Virtual
Cable Input
Open the WXtoImg software, lo-
cate the Options menu and select the
Recording option. Under this locate
the Soundcard option and choose the
Output from this virtual cable, or as
permitted by your PC sound options.
Virtual Cable Output→WXtoImg
Options→Recording→Common
Recording
(EFY Lab note. During testing,
the virtual cable option was not suc-
cessful in Windows 10 but worked
well with Windows 8.1. It is working
well with default sound settings in
Windows 10. You should check the
sound device and settings in your PC
in case it does not work.)
To test whether your audio con-
nections are proper, follow the steps
given below:
Step 1. Start your receiver soft-
ware and tune to the FM stations.
Keep volume level low (15 to 20)
ELECTRONICS FOR YOU | JANUARY 2022 59

from your computer sound control.
Step 2. Start the WXtoImg
software and under main File menu,
choose Record submenu. The re-
cording dialogue box appears. This
is where you need to start capturing
the weather images from the satel-
lite. Under this, click on Manual Test
button as shown in Fig. 19.
Step 3. If the audio is not con-
nected from the receiver to the
Fig. 21: A successful audio connections will lead to such Raster-Image in your decoding software
Fig. 22: The screenshot of GPredict as used by the author
Fig. 23: Starting to record a satellite in transit
60 JANUARY 2022 | ELECTRONICS FOR YOU
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decoding software, you shall see
a plain black picture window as
shown in Fig. 20. This indicates
that the audio is not connected to
the decoder software, so you should
re-check and configure the computer
audio properly. Choose the File
menu, then the Mixer Control sub-
menu, and select proper settings for
the audio connections and proceed
to next step.
Fig. 24: Enabling various Map Overlay options while producing processed images
Step 4. When audio settings are
proper, the WXImg software would
start displaying RAW Image. If your
audio is connected properly, you
shall see a grey-scale image pattern
as shown in Fig. 21. This indicates
that your audio connections are al-
right. Otherwise, you need to go back
to the audio settings once again.
Step 5. If step 4 is successful, go
to the receiver software and tune to a
dead spot on the FM band where no
station is received. Then return to the
WXtoImg decoder software window.
You should see a TV-raster like image
due to the hissing sound from the FM
radio without any kind of audio (see
Fig. 21).
If you are successful in steps 4
and 5, then all your software configu-
rations are working fine and you can
now receive the actual signal from a
satellite.
Satellite prediction software.
Now that you are ready with the
antenna installation, receiver, and the
decoder software, it is time to find
out when the satellite will come near
your location. For this, you can either
use an online tool to find the passing
satellites, or you can download and
install offline tools to predict the sat-
ellite trajectory. The author tried two
options—Orbitron and GPREDICT.
Both these are available as freeware
and can be found at http://www.stoff.
pl/ or http://gpredict.oz9aec.net/,
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Fig. 25: A RAW image successfully received from the satellite showing two channels with graphics
overlay after processing
respectively. You can use any one of
these. The author uses GPredict as
shown in Fig. 22.
Alternately, the WXtoImg soft-
ware also produces a satellite pass
list from the main File menu. You
can use any of the above two tools
to complement each other. It is sug-
gested to save the satellite passes
into a text file for future reference.
Analogue APT image reception
Now, you are ready to receive the
actual satellite signals. Start your re-
ceiver at least five minutes before the
arrival of the satellite on the horizon
and tune to the satellite frequency.
Keep the receiver bandwidth to a
minimum of 50kHz. Wideband FM
settings of 150kHz or more would
simply add more noise to the signal.
Open the prediction software to
look for satellite and its position on
the map. With practice you should
be able to learn well when your
receiver starts picking up the signal.
Open the WXtoImg software and
under the main File menu choose
the submenu Record and then Auto
Record option as shown in Fig. 23.
If the satellite is yet to arrive on
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the horizon in your sky, the recorder
in decoding software will wait and
display the status accordingly. Once,
the satellite appears, the software
starts decoding the image from the
received audio. You can watch the
raw image as displayed by this soft-
ware during the transit of a satellite
as shown in Fig. 15.
Once the satellite pass is com-
pleted, the software automatically
processes the raw image and then
displays and stores the processed
images. To display the raw images,
the map overlays, and other fea-
tures on the processed data, go to
the main menu Options and choose
Map Overlay Options submenu and
follow the steps in the dialogue box
as shown in Fig. 24.
A couple of processed images,
after the signal has been received
successfully from a satellite transit,
are shown in Fig. 25 and Fig. 26.
There might be many features
disabled in the freeware version, but
you can experiment and try various
image enhancement options. But the
images obtained are beyond doubt
sufficient for an experimenter to see
the clouds and carry out basic scien-
Fig. 26: One of the processed output images is
the colour-coded cloud temperatures
tific studies. The author is thankful to
the original authors/creators for their
excellent work in making the freeware
software available for the experiment-
ers. The copyrights, where applicable,
are honoured with thanks.
With the above steps-by-step
information, the author is confi-
dent that this article would help
and guide the readers in setting up
their own weather satellite receiving
station. Kindly note, this experimen-
tation requires great patience and
consistency in efforts to establish
and maintain your weather satellite
receiving station. Once you start
receiving the images on a regular
basis, you can identify the areas to
improve and work towards achiev-
ing better and better results.
Prasanna Waichal holds a master’s degree
in electronics and has more than 25 years of
work experience in industrial R&D for design
and development of specialised and strategic
electronics systems and academic teaching
and research at post-graduate levels, both in
India and abroad. His passions include radio
reception and studying solar activities and their
effect on ionosphere on earth. He is also a
licensed amateur radio operator
with call-sign VU3OOI. He claims
to have discovered a method
to predict earthquakes using
very-low-frequency (VLF) multi-
path-multi-frequency propagation
technique
ELECTRONICS FOR YOU | JANUARY 2022 61