NOAAport help

[GOES 12 GVAR user]

Images......

GOES E 20Mhz Span.... Centered near LRIT
This is the GOES East transponder output @ 20Mhz wide sweep.

EMWIN 10 Mhz Span .....1692.7 Mhz
This is the EMWIN-N broadcast off the GOES East spacecraft.

LRIT 10 Mhz Span .....1691.0 Mhz
This is the LRIT broadcast off the GOES East Spacecraft.

GVAR 10 Mhz Span .....1685.7 Mhz
This is the GVAR broadcast off the GOES East Spacecraft.
Note the (nobs) on top of the GVAR signal, If you can't see these clearly then you will have errors.

Tim KC0HWG

 

[JerryTuesday]

Hi Tim

I disassembled my NOAAPORT antenna to use it for GOES-11. Now I wonder if the power level from SES-1 is up significantly, because i read this today ---
If you've been watching Jose Nieves and my signal quality meters, over the last two
years, they've been pretty low. Last week, I bugged Jami Casamento about it, and
they made a temporary adjustment. Well, now comes this announcement:


NOUS72 KNCF 022355
ADMNCF
ON FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3RD FROM APPROXIMATELY 0830Z TO 0900Z; THE POWER
LEVELS ARE BEING ADJUSTED ON THE AWIPS SBN SATELLITE (SES-1). THIS
ADJUSTMENT IS NOT EXPECTED TO INTERRUPT TRAFFIC ON THE AWIPS SBN. ANY
PRODUCTS IMPACTED BY THIS ACTIVITY WILL BE REBROADCASTED OVER THE AWIPS
SBN. THE NCF WILL BE CLOSELY MONITORING THIS ACTIVITY TO MINIMIZE SBN
OPERATIONS.

NCF/SEG

Hopefully we get more signal out of this.

Jerry

 

[ParaclipseCKu]

Jerry,

You'll have some good signal to work with for the next 2-3 weeks or so. The power levels were adjusted to minimize any interference between SES-1 and Galaxy 15 as it fly's by 101W.

I'm getting the best BER since I started using Noaaport almost 4 years ago. Too bad it won't last for long but then we aren't the main users.

 

[GOES 12 GVAR user]

Galaxy 15 disruptions?

As ParaclipseCKu has said, I myself am getting good data here.
Has Galaxy 15 caused any disruptions in NOAAPORT data as of lately?

I right now have lost lock on NOAAPORT it started around 10:40 AM CST here, It has been an issue last week as well, It tends to last for 5 hours.
It's been out for 4 and a half hours now.
I trying to determine if this is a local issue or something else, Gives me an idea where to start looking.

Tim

 

[GOES 12 GVAR user]

An update, Just looked a NTSB's site and they also lost data around the time I mentioned.

 

[GOES 12 GVAR user]

SPECIAL ATTN: ALL NOAAPORT USERS

Subject: Product Outage/Anomaly: Family of Service Data Outage Issued:
This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--------------000208070306010703020804
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

*Topic: *Family of Service Data Outage*
*

*Date/Time**:*December 05, 2010 2110 UTC*
*

*Product(s) or Data Impacted:*Single Field of View East and West*,*GOES
LCB Ash,
Blended TPW for GPS _NOAAPort and GPS_NOAAPort_Dist1,
GOES East and West ASOS Imager and DPI WEST,
**

*Date/Time of Initial Impact:*December 05, 2010 1900 UTC**

*Date/Time of Expected End:*Unknown**

*Length of Outage:*TBD*
*

*Details/Specifics of Change:*The Family of Service at NSOF is
down and
has affected the above products to be unavailable until further notice.
Tech. control in Silver Spring reports, the problem is due to the
NOAAPORT Satellite at NCF AWIPS having poor signal quality . The
problem is being investigated.*
*

*Contact Information for Further Information:* ESPC Operations at
ESPCOperations@noaa.gov at 301-817-3880 **

*Web Site(s) for applicable information:* N/A
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I'd bet Galaxy 15 doing SES1 in, Wonder if an announcement comes of a
frequency change.

Tim

 

[ParaclipseCKu]

I still don't have lock at my site. Its been out since about 12:45 PM ET.

I believe this has something to do with Galaxy 15 and the power/attenuation change made the other day that was supposed to mitigate any interuption in the Noaaport downlink..

NOUS71 KNCF 052230
ADANCF
.
THE AWIPS SBN SIGNAL HAS BEEN RESTORED.
ALL NEW DATA IS PASSING WITHOUT ANY
PROBLEMS. WE HAVE RETRANSMITTED A SMALL
AMOUNT OF DATA, BUT MOST OF THE PREVOUS
DATA WAS LOST.
.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED PATIENCE.
.
NCF/JB

 

[GOES 12 GVAR user]

Hmm Interesting,
I looked all over for that bulletin and only found it on storm2k form.
They may have restored AWIPS data another way, In the form of fiberoptic land line
I have seen no other messages about this.
I go by here for bulletins

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/SATS/messages.html

NOAAPORT remains down here as well.

Tim

 

[GOES 12 GVAR user]

NOAAPORT BULLETIN

Topic: Update #2 Family of Service Data Outage Date/Time: December 06, 2010 0730 UTC
Product(s) or Data Impacted: Single Field of View East and West, GOES LCB Ash,
Blended TPW for GPS _NOAAPort and GPS_NOAAPort_Dist1,
GOES East and West ASOS Imager and DPI WEST,

Date/Time of Initial Impact: December 05, 2010 1900 UTC
Date/Time of Expected End: December 06,2010 0659 UTC


Length of Outage: Approx. 12 Hours
Details/Specifics of Change: The Family of Service at NSOF is down and has affected the above products to be unavailable until further notice. Tech. control in Silver Spring reports, the problem is due to the NOAAPORT Satellite at NCF AWIPS having poor signal quality . The problem is being investigated.

Update #1 The Family of Service at NSOF is down experience problems. ESPC has dispatched system administrators to repair the Family of Services at NSOF. Technicians are scheduled to be onsite shortly.

Update #2 The Family of Service at NSOF is now back online. Contact Information for Further Information: ESPC Operations at ESPCOperations@noaa.gov at 301-817-3880
Web Site(s) for applicable information: N/A
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Problem continues, stay tuned.
Tim

 

[ParaclipseCKu]

They restored signal by going to 1138.5 instead of the usual 1193.5 L-band frequency.

I didn't find that out until much much later in the evening!

Phil

 

[GOES 12 GVAR user]

NOAAPORT IS BACK

And boy is it strong, Bolth sig. and quality bars are pegged!
Jerry should be having no problems now.

Tim

 

[JerryTuesday]

Hi Tim
I thought NOAAPORT would be too difficult for me to make work with my 7 foot dish so I reworked it to look at GOES-11 (L-Band). is it probable that NOAAPORT will continue to be as strong as it is now? I could do more work on setting up the 9 foot dish for the GOES satellites and try the 7 foot dish with the C-Band feed for the Twinhan if SES-1 will continue to have this strong signal.

Jerry

 

[GOES 12 GVAR user]

Hi Jerry,
As Phil has said

"You'll have some good signal to work with for the next 2-3 weeks or so. The power levels were adjusted to minimize any interference between SES-1 and Galaxy 15 as it fly's by 101W."

If you only want to have NOAAPORT for that time fine, But after is another question.
I'd recommend NOAAPORT on the 9' Dish and GOES west on the 7'
You will get good results with bolth.
I would HIGHLY doubt that SES1 will remain at these levels.
Bummer........I agree.
From rough determination here I'd say the sig level has increased by 2 1/2 , 3 dB more, looking at the Twinhan display.
I should remind all that the transmission will be going to DVB-S2 format at the end of the year. The twinhan card is not capable of receiving this type of format, nor is the Skystar 2 card unless it is the skystar DVB-S2 card.

Tim

 

[JerryTuesday]

Hi Tim
The 2.83 meter solid surface aluminum dish is still flat on the ground awaiting a pedestal. It is not too heavy to pick up, but it is really awkward for me to handle without help. I can easily change my plans concerning how I will use these dishes. As each day passes, I learn more and more that I dont know what I am doing with these Weather satellites. Right now, I hope to be able to try to get enough signal from GOES11, GOES-12 and GOES-13. The bigger dish might be needed for GOES-12.
It is clear to me that I am learning about weather satellite reception and I enjoy introducing whatever antenna knowledge I can to help Patrik Tast and Martin Blaho. I am fully aware that anything we (Patrik, Martin and I) do to demodulate and decode NOAAPORT and GOES signals is only "hobby" level effort, and few people will have interest in our findings. Patrik plans to try using the USRP to demodulate the NOAAPORT DVB-S2 so we dont plan to use a special PCI receiver.

Do you know if the signal level from SES-1 will stay up where it now is, or will they reduce power soon?

Jerry

 

[GOES 12 GVAR user]

Hi Jerry,
First to answer your question

"Do you know if the signal level from SES-1 will stay up where it now is, or will they reduce power soon?"

In about 3 weeks power will be reduced on SES1 (NOAAPORT) back to where it was before.

"As each day passes, I learn more and more that I dont know what I am doing with these weather satellites"

Don't be hard on yourself, cause each day your learning, I didn't learn what I know overnight or in a couple of years and I am still learning.

"Right now, I hope to be able to try to get enough signal from GOES11, GOES-12 and GOES-13. The bigger dish might be needed for GOES-12."

The 7' dish will work fine on the GOES 11, 13 and 12 though I don't know why your interested in 12. 12 is doing south America ops.
You WILL be able to get the EMWIN service and LRIT.

"few people will have interest in our findings"

Don't sell your self short here, I am interested.

I don't quite understand that USRP but I have figured out that it seems to be capable of many formats and modulations. If it can decode the EMWIN 19.2 baud OQPSK stream I WANT to know.

Tim

 

[JerryTuesday]

Hi Tim

When I let myself think the USRP was 'tameable', a few months ago, I set one up and began streaming GOES-11 data to Patrik and Martin (in Europe). I now realize that I will never be able to do anything except follow instructions for using this USRP. My USRP is set up so anyone in the world can access it and my antennas (with Patriks permission) via the Internet. There is very little interest shown by the USRP/software community in this system we have built. And I now realize how sophisticated it is to program a USRP, so I have stopped even trying to figure out these Phase Modulation techniques work. Martin has been able to demodulate and decode the EMWIN using the GOES-11 signal received with the USRP. He said he'd like less noise (as received using the 6 foot deep dish), so I thought the bigger, 2.22 meter dish might help him. None of the people I work with in this hobby have need for the data for weather forecasting. We are just fascinated by the fact that the signals are there and available for use by rank amateurs to view images of the world as seen from satellites.
Several years ago, I got interested trying to get images from the polar orbiting satellites (APT). That interest has spread to this USRP and big dishes. When I first tried making an APT (VHF) antenna, I was totally lost regarding the design of an antenna that is capable of receiving the APT signal. I thought of a way to build an APT antenna and developed it to where it performed better than any other for reception of signals from polar orbiting satellites. I thought the antenna was wonderful and described the concept to the "APT Community". Even though the APT antenna I developed performs better than any other design, the antenna is of almost no interest to the APT community. So, I am not surprised that there is little interest in the USRP/Internet available signals I get.


I thought it might be interesting to be able to show images of South America, so GOES-12 became of interest. It seems so distant that a big dish will be needed. It will be months before I get the 2.83 meter dish working and pointed toward GOES-11, 12, 13. If I find that the signal is strong enough, I can try using the 2.22 meter dish for GOES and dedicate the 2.83 meter dish for NOAAPORT.

I'll convert the 2.22 meter dish back to C-band and try looking at NOAAPORT. I'll let you know what the signal looks like using the USRP, next week.

Jerry

 

[JerryTuesday]

Hi Tim
You could save some guessing if you can tell me the polarization of the SES-1 NOAAPort signal. I'll continue to search the Internet, but have been looking without any success so far.
Jerry

 

[ParaclipseCKu]

Jerry,

The Noaaport signal is vertical. Transponder 13.

Phil

 

[JerryTuesday]

Thanks Phil
I found the SES-1 satellite by looking at the strong signal at 1.1994 GHz. It too is Vertically polarized. The Twinhan is now 100% on both Signal Level and on Quality. I estimate the Signal to be close to 9 dB above the Noise using the 2.22 meter dish.

Jerry

 

[ParaclipseCKu]

After the Galaxy-15 fly-by they will set levels back to where they had been the last few months. Hopefully things will be better because the problem this past Sunday (IMO) was most likely equipment problems on the ground.

Good Luck!

Phil