{"id":487,"date":"2021-03-29T21:15:13","date_gmt":"2021-03-30T01:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.w2mmd.org\/wp\/?page_id=487"},"modified":"2025-12-12T12:01:45","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T17:01:45","slug":"noaa-weather-fax","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wp.w2mmd.org\/wp\/noaa-weather-fax\/","title":{"rendered":"NOAA Weather Fax"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>The NOAA LEO satellites ceased operation in August 2025. Below is a description of the project that was in place while those satellites were still in operation. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The NOAA low-earth orbiting (LEO) weather satellites continually transmit an APT-based signal of the ground below showing cloud cover, precipitation and other weather features. Differing from the GOES satellites these LEO satellites show a much smaller footprint of the area over which they&#8217;re flying, and the quality of their transmission is dependent on their distance from the receiving station. NOAA satellites broadcast in the 137mhz frequency range but can be received with amateur&#8217;s 2 meter antennas as is done at the GCARC clubhouse station. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"599\" height=\"399\" src=\"https:\/\/wp.w2mmd.org\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/NOAA-18-slite-pic.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-595\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wp.w2mmd.org\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/NOAA-18-slite-pic.jpg 599w, https:\/\/wp.w2mmd.org\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/NOAA-18-slite-pic-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 599px) 100vw, 599px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">NOAA 18<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The receiving program runs on a Raspberry Pi and uses an RTL-sdr receiver. The software runs predictions of each upcoming orbit of each satellite being followed and will schedule a receiving session for when the satellite pass starts. The process uses the RTL-FM program to receive the analog signal and record it to a .wav file that is then processed by the WxToImg program to create the images. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Below is a typical image from NOAA 18. Note that it&#8217;s centered over New Jersey meaning that the satellite was traveling almost overhead when sending this image, which is why it&#8217;s so clear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/wp.w2mmd.org\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/NOAA-fig-4-1-1024x450.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-596\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wp.w2mmd.org\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/NOAA-fig-4-1-1024x450.png 1024w, https:\/\/wp.w2mmd.org\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/NOAA-fig-4-1-300x132.png 300w, https:\/\/wp.w2mmd.org\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/NOAA-fig-4-1-768x337.png 768w, https:\/\/wp.w2mmd.org\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/NOAA-fig-4-1.png 1040w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The NOAA LEO satellites ceased operation in August 2025. Below is a description of the project that was in place while those satellites were still in operation. The NOAA low-earth orbiting (LEO) weather satellites continually transmit an APT-based signal of the ground below showing cloud cover, precipitation and other weather features. Differing from the GOES [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-487","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.w2mmd.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.w2mmd.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.w2mmd.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.w2mmd.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.w2mmd.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/wp.w2mmd.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1282,"href":"https:\/\/wp.w2mmd.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/487\/revisions\/1282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.w2mmd.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}