Explaining the 9A4QV V-Dipole Design for Receiving 137 MHz Weather Satellites
Back in 2017 we posted about Adam 9A4QV's simple V-Dipole antenna design which works very well for receiving NOAA and Meteor weather satellites at 137 MHz. This type of antenna is a lot easier to build compared to a QFH or turnstile, and it results in good performance if built and set up correctly. Over the years he notes that he's received a number of questions asking to clarify the design and so he's uploaded a YouTube video which explains the built and dimensions of the antenna clearly.
one of the issue with terminal block is it do not hold wire elements from little moving, which alters v angle. no one explained how to arrest this.
I was able to receive 137MHz weather sat signals fairly clearly with an old set of rabbit ears and it’s attached balun connected to an airspy and also with an RTL-SDR v3. I must also say though that I did not record or attempt to decode the signal so I can’t attest to it’s effectiveness at decoding weather sat images, but if all you’re interested in is seeing what the waterfall looks like, a good ‘ol set of rabbit ears will get you at least that far. I also highly recommend using gpredict to tell you when the right time to look for a signal is. That is especially important for me as a live in a valley that is surrounded by mountains so the window in which I can receive any sat signals is very short.
Had great results with the RTL Blog dipole antenna which is rabbit ears that came with my v3 dongle. Slap it into a v-dipole shape and the sats come down nicely.
I’m finding that just about any antenna that is horizontally polarized seem to do fairly good. I’m using my HexBeam and I get pretty decent pictures, however, I’m building one of this this weekend, as I still have bands of noise in the pictures.
I should have said Horizontally orientated.