New GOES Weather Satellite Bundle from NooElec
NooElec have recently released for sale a GOES geostationary weather satellite reception bundle which includes a parabolic grid dish, feed, GOES LNA and RTL-SDR dongle. The bundle should be usable for the GK-2A satellite, as well as HRIT from polar orbiting satellites, although for HRIT you'll need some way to motorize or hand track the satellites.
Typically to receive GOES a 2.4 GHz WiFi grid dish has been used in the past. While the mismatch between 2.4 GHz and the 1.7 GHz used by GOES doesn't cause too much trouble, the dish provided by NooElec has a feed optimized for the 1.7 GHz which should make receiving the signal easier. The bundle also comes with their SAWbird+ GOES LNA, one of their always ON bias tee E4000 tuner based RTL-SDR dongles and a roll of 10m LMR400 cable.
The bundle is currently available on Amazon USA priced at US$179.95. Canadian customers can also order from Amazon.ca for CDN$259.95. Amazon shipping is free within the USA, however shipping this overseas will cost at least US$100 extra due to the weight + additional import fees. That said, the coverage area of GOES is mostly only for the USA, Canada and South America.
If you're interested in GOES or GK-2A satellite reception we have a tutorial written here.
I’ve had mine running a couple months now. Works great! It was surprisingly easy to set up and get working. Using some astronomy software on my iPhone I was quickly able to find GOES16 satellite and get a good signal with just a few minutes of adjusting. I run it on a Raspberry Pi4 with GoesTools.
I was up and running within an hour of opening the box! It went together slowly but surely.
And HRIT is there!
Got mine up and running. Works great. Clean images, even though vi of 250 is the best I could get. A few things – instructions on how to build the dish did not come with the package, but I found them on the Nooelec website – it’s a graph that explains most everything. Second, the Sawbird goes at the antenna – it is in between the pigtail from the feed and the length of cable that come with the system. Make sure you don’t install it in line with the SDR indoors, because there is too much loss otherwise.
Quite happy. Once I got pointed, I was filling up images on my Pi4 rather fast.
https://imgur.com/3oDVlCl
https://imgur.com/0q1JORt
Got it a few days ago, spent an hour putting things together and getting the PI going. First image.. https://imgur.com/5siID4z
These antennas should come with a modified mount bracket that allows for fine adjustment of the feed polarization. As they are now I think you can only adjust the polarization in 45 degree steps, which is far from optimal. Also, it should be mentioned that antennas of this size are only capable of receiving the lower rate / lower resolution LRIT (Low Rate Information Transmission) products, not the HRIT (High Rate Information Transmission) products.
Are you sure it can’t do HRIT? The description clearly says it receives HRIT, and the setup guides using a 2.4 mesh show examples of HRIT imagery being displayed. http://usradioguy.com/goes-satellite-imagery-reception/
It can definitely receive HRIT. I had an antenna like this running goestools for a couple of years.
Mine too! Love my current Nooelec sdr.
This looks incredible! I’ve tried putting it together on my own and gave up 🙂 This is on my Christmas list…