Update April 2020: So just over a year later, the plastic caps in the antenna are not amazing and wind/rain has caused them to change angle and come lose. After a recent storm I had to go on the edge of the roof because one of the dipole pairs literally fell out of the aluminium. Also, the received signal is STILL not as strong as the signal I got using the wooden antenna and I am beginning to wonder whether the aluminium being metallic is effecting the signal. This particular antenna design is quite tolerant to things not being quite right but when the satellite is right above me, I get very little signal so quite often the middle of the picture will be cut off. The antenna wire is also unnecessarily long because I had too much spare and maybe that introduced some losses. In my next revision I might consider making it out of either PVC, or making the antenna using much higher quality coax and no plastic end caps - instead it will likely be bolted directly to the frame (somehow). Digital captures from the METEOR M2 satellite require a very stable signal coming in and I just don't have that with this antenna. I can very easily get the NOAA ones because they are analog. I also put a new version of windows on my laptop which requires me to reinstall everything including all the SDR# plugins and i'm having issues getting the meteor plugin working again. I have my RTLSDR plugged into a raspberry pi and I now connect to it via TCP as that allows me to use my antenna remotely. In the comments below, Ahmad Hasan references a guy who used a V dipole which may give better results, but that required the antenna to be a certain height above the ground in a field, which isn't really possible on the roof of a house.
I also made a version 1 with wood and some heavy duty galvanized steel wires and it worked really good i even got images right at 5º of angle with the antenna siting 2 meters from ground level, it got somehow broken, im currently thinking of building one with 5 or 9.5mm aluminium rod and the frame of pvc tube using some 3d printed parts so im able to fold the antenna and store it in a small place or take it in the car for a better spot, this is the link to the thingiverse page of the project not made by me, www.thingiverse.com/thing:2963713
i also saw in a forum about a guy having problems to get a good quality signal while the antenna was on his roof and after some back a forth he found that the roof of the house was somehow reflecting and messing with the signal to the point it was unusable, try taking the antenna down and test it.
@@BoomBrush From what ive been researching its possible and given that its made with steel its even worse since from what im seeing, its not really recomended to make the antenna frame from metal let alone the roof, i believe it acts as some kind of ground plane or something, since im not really experienced with this stuff dont take my word for it, this is the forum about the roof interference. www.rtl-sdr.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4603&sid=216156bc7e51a21aa9462827f7334211&start=10 You can see the OP response in the last post.
I use a RTLSDR dongle on a Raspberry Pi running the Satnogs image. You can then autoschedule it to grab every Satellite pass you are interested in. Works well. As others have said in the comments, a LNA with FM Notch works wonders.
You know, that is a very good idea I didn't think of. Your "late" timing is actually perfect because I was going to create a 2nd antenna in a follow up video to this one and compare the differences. I was planning on constructing the antenna literally in the next few hours. Thank you for that idea!
Ive finished making the new antenna but in the past few days have run into issues with NOAA 19 passing at the same time as METEOR M2 (they both transmit at 137.1MHz) as well as bad weather, which has resulted in poor passes. Initial captures at ground level looked promising but have since put the antenna on the roof to help with signal. I did a capture this morning but it was quite cloudy. I also want to experiment with how much RF gain to put on the SDR, too much seems to drown out the signal but with 1 shot a day at inconvenient hours its very hard to test. Hoping to make a video soon comparing the two antennas, sharing my findings.
I posted an update to this video ( ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-TLwQ2-ZbkWw.html ) but it has been a while since I've tinkered with any of this stuff. Working full time has taken a lot out of me, but I hope that 2021 update is somewhat useful.
Yes and no. Inside the description is a PDF document which includes a wiring diagram. The left and right pairs are connected in series, but they are connected in parallel with the top and bottom pair, also in series. The wiring diagram shows this as well as the opposite polarity. It also includes the fact one pair has to be 1/4 longer in physical wire in order for the phases of the signal to match up.
Please do, sounds amazing. This video kinda was a bit all over the place and I think I didn't really explain it was about an antenna design. Rather than showing off how to get the images.
Hi, I did not create it myself, I used this document: www.qsl.net/py4zbz/DCA.pdf (link also in description) I was thinking about remaking the antenna but out of non conductive parts as I suspect that is causing an issue. Also the received signal is not amazing quality. I still havent gotten an image as good as that initial one after ~2 years of trying.
do you post your updates anywhre on reddit or something? check this lad's post www.reddit.com/r/amateursatellites/comments/cnnjjm/how_i_came_up_with_my_current_vdipole_design_and/ he gave so many in sights to the idea of antennas and the potential of V-dipoles.
Hi, That is an interesting post which I haven't seen before. No it's not me. I might look into the possibility of using a v-dipole but i don't think that would work in terms of the reflector being one wave length above the ground with it being on the house. If you read the pinned comment I posted an update. Thank you
