Ham Radio - Decoding marine weather fax using FLdigi on HF 

A bunch of us hams built Wefax decoders for the Radio Shack Color computer on a blank Rom pack boards. They worked so good that the NOAA office in the bay area thought we were lying to them when we showed them some near perfect printouts. It was lots of fun. Thanks for the video Kevin.

In the days of DOS, I monitored WEFAX through an MFJ1278B. I would sometimes print it. I haven't done that since Win 95. Good times. Thanks for the memories.

This was very informative. I don't have a transmitter, but i used to listen to my desktop radio and I've heard that sound many times. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

Kevin - Thanks for the video, helped me clean up my decode with the Noise filter. To correct the image slant, you may want to use the auto align toggle - which is just to the left of the Noise filter.

Very cool. Decoding some now for the first time. Appreciate the guidance.

Lots of great info there, Kevin.

Watched the video - up and running receiving wefax with fldigi in abt 5 minutes. Good stuff. Tnx

Great video! I just used it to receive my first weather fax from Northwood on 8040 kHz! :-)

Good info! I used to copy this once in a while, will have to give it a try again. 73

Right On ! Trying to master fldigi and this helps.

Outstanding, thanks! For the people asking about how to send your SDR audio to another program, do a search for Virtual Audio Cable.

Interesting stuff :-) Thanks for the video

for Europe, add the Pinneberg station, on 3855, 7880 and 13882.5 KHz in WEFAX576 mode.

Just for correctness - NOAA provides the weather maps, but US Coast Guard actually handles the HF broadcasting. NOAA/NWS converts the images to the Fax audio format and hands off to USCG.

Kevin, Great video! What antenna are you using for the SDR Dongle? Thanks!

I remember receiving fax on a Commodore 64 back in the 80's. A little harder to view on 320x200 pixels.

Very straightforward presentation. Do you know if this application land based only? Or might it work offshore as well?

Kevin, that’s a great explanation. Could you possibly share all the setup info with your setup please. Maybe a simple tutorial on what you installed and what you need. I have rtl-Sdr but I assume you need an up converter and some form of audio pipe s/w fo fldigi ?

If you have an Android phone there is a HF Wefax decoder. It's cheap and does start in auto mode. So if you are at the beach you can get information via fax using your cell phone also. When I do fax on Fldigi I put it 1.5Khz down and you get a nice white image. I set the center to 1500 and have audio from the station at 2000Hz and without fade it does give a clear white image.

Great! Now if fldigi could do sstv! (or can it???)

do you puut the rcvr audio into the mic jack::::

Tnx for this video Kevin. Receiving wefax was one of my favourites back when I was a SWL late 80s early 90s, and still like to do this once in a while. To tune correctly to a wefax station, set your receiver 1.9 kHz lower than the listed frequency, and in USB ofcourse, so that the black frequency is at 1500 Hz, and the wite at 2300 Hz for a correct picture, although it does work when not tuned at 1.9 kHz, as you demonstrated. If you like to play with other fax software, I recommend JWX, a Java based software that really works well and on different platforms as well. You can find it here, along with some interesting theory about fax receiving: arachnoid.com/JWX/ Hope this is useful....73 ! Patrick ON4CDJ

I dont see the LPM controls in my version of Fldigi? Should they be there in latest version? What do I click to start receiver when I hear the chirps?

I have HDSRD running with the frequency programed, but I don't know how to pump that data into FLdigi