GOES 16 reception help
Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2018 4:23 pm
Hi all,
I just started playing with reception of GOES 16 from upstate NY. As it sits from my house I'm looking at ~40deg elevation and around a 185 heading. This puts it just at the tops of the trees in my back yard.
First question is, will a few sticks in the way really kill my signal that much? I understand leaves will be a whole other story which I'll likely find myself climbing a tree with a chainsaw later to tackle.
I have the 2.4GHz 24dbi parabolic grid antenna currently. Also running a NESDR SMArTee XTR (alternatively I tried a RTL-SDR v.3 dongle), also running a SAWBird+ GOES LNA. I can't seem to get any signal at all, or at least any compared to my noise floor. I'm trying to figure out if it's the LNA or the antenna causing the issues. I'm basically running the thing direct to the antenna, so no coax loss.
I've tried flipping the sub-reflector, placing the dish diagonal, horizontal, vertical, etc. The only thing I haven't done is extended the dipole for 1694mhz to get it closer to the freq. So I'm running out of options here and it seems hard to find people that know what they're talking about with this kind of thing even in the amateur radio community.
Last night was my first success even seeing anything on the waterfall... Unfortunately after switching to the v.3 dongle and back to the XTR I wasn't able to replicate the signal reception again... and it was cold and my fingers were frozen so I gave up.
So, where to go from here? Attached some photos.
I just started playing with reception of GOES 16 from upstate NY. As it sits from my house I'm looking at ~40deg elevation and around a 185 heading. This puts it just at the tops of the trees in my back yard.
First question is, will a few sticks in the way really kill my signal that much? I understand leaves will be a whole other story which I'll likely find myself climbing a tree with a chainsaw later to tackle.
I have the 2.4GHz 24dbi parabolic grid antenna currently. Also running a NESDR SMArTee XTR (alternatively I tried a RTL-SDR v.3 dongle), also running a SAWBird+ GOES LNA. I can't seem to get any signal at all, or at least any compared to my noise floor. I'm trying to figure out if it's the LNA or the antenna causing the issues. I'm basically running the thing direct to the antenna, so no coax loss.
I've tried flipping the sub-reflector, placing the dish diagonal, horizontal, vertical, etc. The only thing I haven't done is extended the dipole for 1694mhz to get it closer to the freq. So I'm running out of options here and it seems hard to find people that know what they're talking about with this kind of thing even in the amateur radio community.
Last night was my first success even seeing anything on the waterfall... Unfortunately after switching to the v.3 dongle and back to the XTR I wasn't able to replicate the signal reception again... and it was cold and my fingers were frozen so I gave up.
So, where to go from here? Attached some photos.