I’ve seen NOAAPORT before but haven’t paid any attention to it for two reasons. Firstly it seemed to have a high entry price $10-20k for the equipment/software and (for me at least) it’s pointless even dreaming about it because it runs off a geostationary satellite over the Pacific ocean, so it’s over the horizon. I was looking at something else today and saw a NOAAPORT receiver at under $400 (new from the manufacturer (Novra S75)). I also discovered that there’s free software for handling the data streams off the satellite, so for those in the coverage area it looks like an interesting and not too expensive way to get hold of a lot of met data. OK, it needs a 10ft (or bigger) dish, but I think everyone in the US has one of those in their back gardens so it shouldn’t be a big problem
So, has anyone tried it and if so, how well does it work? I wish some far thinking UK or European Met service would do the same, but over here all they’re interested in is income :x
It’s a few years since I was in the US, but I thought I remembered that about one in every 3 gardens had what looked like a major inter-planetary communication system in them. It’s a shame that NOAAPORT uses C-band. If they used Ku-band the dish would only need to be about 1m diameter.
Those C band systems have been pretty much been replaced with the small Ka(?) band systems, but you do see the dishes rusting away in rural areas. I don’t think many of them were 10’ though, except maybe in the far north, more like 6-7 ft.
When you say over the Pacific Ocean Chris is this way north of us in NZ and AU by the equator?
http://www.inmanavenue.com/satellite.jpg is calculated from one probably over Borneo or somewhere…
Just before, the image had really distorted edge sections for no data, the further south the more distorted.
