[Scan-DC] Another kind of scanning

[Steve Uhrig]

Hi all,

I don't guess audio is the only thing to monitor.

My wife is a former Air Force meteorologist, and really into weather. 
We have a professional weather station installed here for realtime 
info and history/trends. With all that, my wife still watched the 
weather channel on TV for the satellite weather maps.

So earlier this year, I built her an APT (Automatic Picture 
Transmission) receiving station to get realtime satellite weather 
images. It works perfectly, and we get the identical data as any TV 
station, ship or government agency. Here is a recent image straight 
from the system, with no manual enhancements:

http://www.swssec.com/jpegs/noaa-17-12181544-msa.jpg

This image is typical, not a cherry example, and obtained with a 
surplus computer and less than $300 in hardware. We get 6-12 images a 
day similar to this, all with an unattended station.

If there is interest, I'll repeat a post I made to one of the weather 
lists with more details on the hardware. It's fairly simple, although 
a garden variety scanner won't work. You generally need either a 
heavily modified scanner or, much better, a dedicated receiver. 
Bandwidth from the satellites is 30 kc FM, too wide for NB and too 
narrow for WB.

Google searching on APT will teach you a lot on the subject.

Blessed holidays to everyone.

Steve WA3SWS


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Steve Uhrig, SWS Security, Maryland (USA)
Mfrs of electronic surveillance equip
mailto:Steve@swssec.com  website http://www.swssec.com
tel +1+410-879-4035, fax +1+410-836-1190
"In God we trust, all others we monitor"
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