Weather under way

[mynameismud]

My whole life I've been dabbling in radio transmissions and boating. A thought came to me trying to get weather or gribs.

Could it be possible to get the actual transmissions from a weather satallite while underway if you know the times the satallite is passing over? Just have the right software to read the data packet. I've read about it being done on land. I myself have not been able to build a radio shack to try it or have a radio and antenna to receive but I hope within a year I can get that hobby alive again.

[model 10]

It will need to be pretty fancy with gyro stabilization etc.. Can you do that? If you can, figure out a cheap gyro stabilized autopilot while you're at it.

[Paul Elliott]

Yes, it's been done, and using a pretty simple fixed antenna.

Here's a somewhat technical link, using a cheap SDR (Software Defined Radio): RTL-SDR Tutorial: Receiving NOAA Weather Satellite Images - rtl-sdr.com

Here are a couple of links to discussions here on Cruisers Forum, showing how members are doing exactly this:
http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ing-21991.html

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...te-144167.html

Note that "El Pinguino" commented that the WX satellites being used have a limited life expectancy and they aren't sending up any more (of this type): http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ml#post1795554

It looks like fun! Of course you can also get these images (or similar, and useful) via SSB receiver and WFAX transmissions, or Ham radio email (Winlink) or Satphone email at Saildocs.com. I think the images are generally too big to let you reasonably use SSB and Sailmail.