--------------------------------------------------------------- Frequency: 11.141.3 Mhz Mode BD/SH: Baudot 75/850 Callsign : `JP' Date Time : 05/17/94 0421 Location : Unknown S I N P O : 55555 Remarks : Station with RY's and SG's "DE JP". ------------------------------------------------------------- Frequency: 11.019.5 Mhz Mode BD/SH: Baudot 75/850 Callsign : RPFN Date Time : 05/18/94 2042 Location : Montsanto, Portugal S I N P O : 44434 Remarks : Portuguese navy with RY's to RPTI (Ponta Delgada, Azores). --------------------------------------------------------------- Frequency: 12.216.0 Mhz Mode BD/SH: Baudot 122/530 Callsign : `DOR' Date Time : 05/18/94 2040 Location : Sofia, Bulgaria S I N P O : 44444 Remarks : Out of crypto with news package for Washington and other cities. This station QSY'ed here from 11.167.0 Mhz. Baud rate changes occurred after "FFFFF". --------------------------------------------------------------- Frequency: 11.115.0 Mhz Mode BD/SH: ARQ-E3 100/460 Callsign : RFHI Date Time : 05/19/94 0533 Location : Noumea, New Caledonia S I N P O : 44444 Remarks : French Military with "Controle De Voie" --------------------------------------------------------------- Frequency: 12.214.0 Mhz Mode BD/SH: Baudot 50/450 Callsign : YZO 7 Date Time : 05/19/94 1729 Location : Belgrade, Yugoslavia S I N P O : 33323 Remarks : (TANJUG) with news in french. --------------------------------------------------------------- Frequency: 16.119.0 Mhz Mode BD/SH: Baudot 50/470 Callsign : 6VK 317 Date Time : 05/19/94 1915 Location : Dakar, Senegal S I N P O : 33222 Remarks : Pan African News Agency (PANA) with news about Africa in English. --------------------------------------------------------------- END OF REPORT MAY 19, 1994 1915 UTC =============================================================== 73's Paul --- Maximus/2 2.01wb * Origin: Arcane BBS -- a Penny for your thoughts... (1:167/116) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 205 RTTY Ref: B5W00001 Date: 05/24/94 From: REID KELLY Time: 07:52am \/To: ALL (Read 10 times) Subj: Noaa/meteor sat's 1/3 * Originally By: Russ Tillman * Originally To: Reid Kelly * Originally Re: Noaa/meteor sat's 1/3 * Original Area: Shortwave * Forwarded by : Blue Wave v2.12 Reid: As per earlier discussion, here's the DRIG BBS bulletin on setting up weather satellite receiving station. RECEIVING WEATHER SATELLITE IMAGERY: A BEGINNER'S PRIMER -------------------------------------------------------- Courtesy Dallas Remote Imaging Group Datalink RBBS ============> 214-394-7438 Dedicated to satellite tracking, decoding of NOAA/Soviet meteorological satellite telemetry, and Digital Image Processing of satellite pictures. Jeff Wallach, N5ITU, Chairman John Williams, Co-Chairman John DuBois, W1HDX, VAS/HRPT Design Engineer T S Kelso, Air Force/NASA liaison Ed O'Grady, Soviet Space Program Analyst Mark Sims, Director Software Development All aspects of Amateur Radio covered on Datalink RBBS (IF YOU COPY THIS BULLETIN FOR OTHER SYSTEMS, PLEASE BE KIND ENOUGH TO LEAVE THIS BANNER AS DUE CREDIT TO THE HARD-WORKING FOLKS WHO DEVELOPED AND CONTINUALLY UPDATE THIS INFORMATIVE 'HOW-TO'BULLETIN) Dayton HamVention '91 (rev 14) Tom Gentry, K5VOU, has been kind enough to help us prepare the following: HOW TO RECEIVE APT PICTURES FROM THE NOAA SATELLITES ---------------------------------------------------- So you have decided you want to receive the NOAA and Russian METEOR orbiters and you have a radio that receives 137.500 MHz and a computer. So now what do you do? I hope this short dissertation will steer you in the correct direction. To display a picture from the orbiting birds you need several things. First you need to 'acquire' the satellite. This means you need the program to calculate its position at any time and determine if you can hear the ignals from the 'bird'. The best place to get this program is probably AMSAT-NA an organization dedicated to AMateur SATellites. They have several very good tracking programs for the IBM and also for Commodore and Apple as well. After you have acquired the program and have it running on your computer, you then need the Keplerian Elements for the NOAA satellites. These elements as well as some tracking programs are available from the CELESTIAL RCP/M, run by TS Kelso, at 513-427-0674 (Fairborn,OH) and from the Weather Fax and Remote Imaging DATALINK BBS run by Dr. Jeff Wallach, N5ITU as bulletins for some 00+ sets of satellite data. Another bulletin also tells you to what the printed numbers correspond so you can enter them into the computer program. Use the newest elements you can find as the orbiting satellites are ubject to forces which change their orbits. If you use Keplerian Elements more than or 4 weeks old, your chances of hearing the bird are reduced. Once you are tracking the birds you should hear them on your receiver. They will be on 137.62(NOAA-9/11), 137.500(NOAA-10), and on 137.850, 137.400, and 137.300 for Soviet Meteorological Satellites/METEOR. The Chinese satellite Feng Yun transmits on 137.795 when it is operational. Now comes the first thing different about NOAA orbiters. The frequency deviation of the FM transmission is about +/-18-20 kHz. This is 4 times the normal deviation of a police call and 1/3 the deviation of the FM broadcast band FM signal. If you receive the signal on the regular communications width of the scanner the light areas of the picture will be noisy and the signal will ound distorted and the picture will basically be useless. If you use the FM broadcast bandwidth (assuming your scanner will let you), the signal will be weak and there may be too much background noise to see the picture. So what now ? Well there are two ways to fix the problem, find a receiver with the proper I.F. bandwidth filter of 50 kHz, or modify the I.F. of your scanner to about 50-80 kHz. The simplest mod which has been found to e workable is to remove the narrow communications I.F. filter and replace it with a 0.01 uFd capacitor. This provides for good Wefax pictures from GOES and pretty fair NOAA orbiter pictures - see March 1991, '73 Amateur Radio Today' article for a description of this procedure. It can of course result in retuning the radio, voiding the warranty and making the squelch ot work properly. The other characteristic of the NOAA satellite transmissions is THEY ARE WEAK. To get good pictures over a large area we have found a pre-amplifier to be essential. A GaAs-FET type can be obtained from various sources at reasonable price but still about 50-100 dollars. You can also build one for about 25 dollars from plans for a pre-amp for the 2-meter amateur band and tune it to 137.5 easily. Lastly, but importantly, the antenna can be of an omni directional, niform pattern type such as a turnstile antenna similar to those used in the FM broadcast reception business but of course tuned to 137.5 on broomsticks have been known to work, and it is not difficult to build the antenna. Of course 2-meter beams with Az/El tracking will do the job well. Now that you have a nice audio signal from the satellite, what happens next? The audio tone of 2400 HZ which is the carrier tone that is used to carry the picture information (video), must be detected and the video data converted from analog to digital and then displayed on the computer monitor by the software. The hardware and software to do this is available from several sources with more coming along. Several stand-alone boxes are also available that produce some form of computer output either in printed form or on the display. In addition the people on the DATALINK BBS may also have some data to share with you regarding this equipment. One of the best sources for information is the WEATHER SATELLITE HANDBOOK by Dr. Ralph Taggart. The 4th edition is now available from the ARRL. A ust is THE JOURNAL OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL SATELLITE AMATEUR USERS' GROUP - JESAUG which is published quarterly. It is available for $30.00 per year from the editor, Jeff Wallach, PO Box 117088 Carrollton, TX. 75011-7088. Back issues of the JESAUG are also available. One good place to start is with the Elmer Schwittek MULTIFAX or the MULTIFAX MAP software which runs on the IBM PC. The PC interface hardware is available as printed circuit board alone, board and all parts, or ompletely assembled. Additional image processing software is available online TALINK. The units available from David Schwittek, Ralph Taggart, Jerry Dahl, GTI Electronics and Quorum communications listed under Sources are all well worth investigating if you are just getting started. You can obtain directly from DATALINK the MULTIFAX MAP interface hardware designed by Jim Bartlett and David Schwittek. 'Typical' APT Receiving Station