One of the benefits of being a clanky is that quite a few companies still run the 'Friday afternoon off work' policy. My company is one of them. This friday I decided to see if my IC-7000 with it's reciever would be capable of receiving weather satellite images. I have the reciever, a copy of Wxtoimg for decoding the signals, I was short of a suitabel antenna. A hombrew antenna was in on the cards.
Following the design that is on G4ILO's website for a QFH antenna, I trotted off to focus and bough a few lengths of waste pipe, 22mm and 40mm NB sections.
My daughter, at 3 1/2, was my assistant and chief marker of the pipes that needed to be cut. She also helped pick the best looking pieces of pipe work, although she was a little disappointed that nothing was pink! I'll have to address this if I'm going to count on her services in the future.
The design looks quite complicated but actually isn't that hard to follow once you get your head round the various connections. I used some left over co-ax for mine and after an hour or so of cutting, drilling and stripping (the coax) a rather wonky looking QFH antenna was borne.
Once all connected up and the software running I had high hopes of receiving something. Wxtoimg was kind enough to tell me that the signal was in the range of 'it stinks' to ' signal? what signal?'. Even with careful calibration of the sound levels, swapping between the wonky QFH and normal 2m vertical gave no change. The error was summarised by 'Narrow IF bandwidth - please upgrade software' or similar. Upgrade in this sense meant shelling out nearly 50 Euro's, a little more than I was prepared to do for a look see.
I tried other software and the result, or lack of result was the same. The conclusion for this weekends fun with radio projects is, the IC-7000 isn't particulary good for Wx satellite reception, probably due to the bandwith and my cheapo antenna. My daughter isn't that interested in radio (unless its pink) and that if I'm going to find out if the antenna is any good then I'm going to have to shell out, either for the software or a dedicated / better receiver.
Still I enjoyed the build and all the parts cost me £6.
I had the same experience using an FT-817 as a receiver. The paid for version of wxtoimg made a bit of difference, but not much, mainly through allowing to track the receiver frequency using a CAT connection to compensate for doppler.
ReplyDeleteThe only real solution is a dedicated wxsat receiver with a wide IF filter.
That was my gut feeling, although people have reported some success I was dubious as to how well the images actually come out. I did a little bit of googling and found a few receivers that are quite expensive. There seem to be a few kits floating about as well so maybe its a good candidate for a winter project. That'll mean sorting out the garage/workshop as well as I have been been banned from creating a complete mess in the house!
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