Sunday, 21 October 2012

Some NOAA APT Decodes

Listening to the scanner this morning I heard the distinctive APT 'chiming' sound as one of the NOAA polar orbiting weather satellites was making a pass. It has been a while since I have done any APT decoding, so decided to capture some of the passes of NOAA-18 and NOAA-19 this afternoon.

The first two passes of both satellites were North to South around 20-30 degrees elevation, this image was the best of the them, the UK is in the upper left. 

NOAA-19 11:32 UTC 21-OCT-2012
The following passes were much higher, almost overhead, there was some interference on this NOAA-18 pass due to pagers and I got disorientated whilst hand holding 2-meter YAGI, hence the lost of signal near the top of the image.

NOAA-18 14:02 UTC 21-OCT-2012
However the NOAA-19 pass before it was much better. What is noticable is the bands of darkening, caused by nearby buildings and some large trees shielding the satellite from my the line of sight position.

NOAA-19 11:12 UTC 21-OCT-2012

All images were decoded realtime using the SDR-Radio program, received by the FUNCube Dongle connected to the InnovAntennas Yagi.

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