Images received from NOAA satellites
In the last two days, I tested a very simple setup to receive and decode signals transmitted by the NOAA weather satellites. The configuration consists in a VHF/UHF whip, connected to a DX Patrol SDR (RTL2832U based), followed by SDR Sharp application and finally WXtoImage (freeware edition) as decoding software.
Using a magnetic base, I fixed the antenna with an angle less than 90 degress from the ground and perpendicular with the satellite's North-South direction.
I use this setup for high elevation passes of NOAA-15 and NOAA-18 (78 and 80 degrees, respectively).
If the first test, with NOAA-15, seemed very promising
the second one, with NOAA-18 was a real success, WXtoImage generating two great pictures after decoding:
The video recordings of these experiments are available below:
NOAA-15: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGoe6ZVsQ4E
NOAA-18: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfQ4Hg-BENk