N8YEL's Amateur Radio Pages

Home Brew Weather Satellite Imagery

This is a home-brew Quadra-filar helix Wx-Sat receive antenna. It's mounted on my deck railing about 10 feet off the ground and constructed of hand bent copper tubing and is great performer! I put a 10db pre amp in line, with power fed up the coax, for enhanced reception that allows me to receive, with my Yaesu FT-50r HT, in wide FM mode, the polar orbiting NOAA Wx-Sats.

Using a software package by Christian Bock called WXSAT (available free via the internet) I am able to decode the received audio using my computer sound card to capture great quality weather images. On a typical pass from my QTH in Zeeland, Michigan I can start receiving imagry from just south of Cuba to just north of Hudsons Bay in Canada.

Here is a snippet from one received satellite image that shows my home State of Michigan and the surrounding great lakes very clearly: