Testing a WiFi Grid Antenna for L-Band Satellites
Over on YouTube dereksgc has uploaded a video where he tests out a 2.4 GHz WiFi Grid antenna for L-band weather satellite reception. WiFi grid antennas are typically repurposed in the SDR community for L-Band weather satellite reception because they are cheap and mostly work out of the box. They can also be used for hydrogen line radio astronomy. TV dish antennas are an alternative but with them, a custom feed needs to be built.
In his video, dereksgc tests the WiFi dish on receiving various polar-orbiting L-band satellites including Metop, and Meteor M2. With the polar orbiting satellites the dish needs to point at the satellite as it passes over the sky and so dereksgc recommends using a mount if hand tracking them.
Later in the video he tests some geostationary satellites but finds that the dish is not tuned well enough to receive Elektro-LN3 properly without modifications. He was however able to receive a noisy image from FengYun-2H successfully.
We note that we also currently have our Discovery Dish product available for pre-order, which is similar to the WiFi grid dish, but smaller and lighter weight with a built-in optimized active feed.