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.

Not a bad pass this morning – image displayed with HVCT false colour enhancement showing sea as blue and colours more indicative of land temperatures.

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.