Same kit as yesterday and the same two passes shown below – both with MCIR with Precipitation enhancement.


So continuing my experiments I plugged in my Airspy Discovery HF+, checked all was working ok with SDR# V1780 and configured VAC so I could direct audio output from SDR# into wxtoimg. If anyone is interested the VAC settings which worked for me are shown in the image below.
I then fired up wxtoimg and set the Recording input to be VAC Line 1. You can then go into Windows 10 properties for VAC Line 1 (Recording) and click Listen to This. So you can hear the satellite audio as it is being piped into wxtoimg. I set the SDR# mode to be WFM with a 34k bandwidth. The results were the two images below. I’m pretty pleased with the pictures. Next step is to see how a Nooelec Smart SDR and a Nooelec Smartee (with built-in Bias-T) to power a Sawbird NOAA 137 MHz filter and pre-amp work. And if it ever stops raining for a day or two to get the turnstile antenna up.
Getting back into weather satellite decoding after almost ten years. Plan is to have Raspberry Pi 4b display images decoded on a 7″ screen with Pi secured behind it. However first things first. Need to check I can decode the images on a PC.
Picture below is thermal imaging enhancement from NOAA 15 on a north pass pass at 18:42 local. Rig is a AOR DV-1 which has an ideal 30k filter but the recording output is only 15k discriminator! Antenna is a very low Diamond V2000 at around 2.5m so you can see the signal drop-outs (horizontal noise bands) from obstructions in the local environment. Software is the venerable wxtoimg pro edition. This is now effectively freeware though I paid for my pro edition back in the day. I couldn’t get the production copy from https://wxtoimgrestored.xyz/ to install under WIndows 10 but the beta version did and works fine.
Next up is to either get the V2000 higher or install the turnstile antenna I bought a year ago in a higher position. The ultimate is a quadrifilar antenna but that can wait until everything else is working. Software wise I’ll test a Airspy HF+ Discovery or SDRPlay SdxDx into wxtoimg via a virtual cable and also start building the software which is required on the Pi.