I’ve lived back in the USA about 5 years and now lived through my 2nd Atlantic Hurricane.  Florence put a whooping on New Bern in 2018 and Dorian which just passed was a NEAR miss on New Bern.  We caught the very edge of it.

But every big life event like this teaches you some things.  One of the biggest lessons that I learned was that the news Hurricane coverage just was not up to date.   You could be awake at 3 AM and check the news web sites and their latest updates were 2-3 hours old.  In a fast moving hurricane, headed for you, 2-3 hour old news is age old.

Prior to the storm I set up a GOES satellite receiver which pulls down data from GOES-16 EAST.  The data looks like this:

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Just a quick blog for showing how to hook up the NooElec Sawbird GOES Barebones for those of you trying to decode NOAA GOES satellites.  Oddly enough I couldn’t find a data sheet or manual for it.  And its a bit of a head scratcher if it is your first go-round with such items.  So I’m here to make it easy.

Their webpage merely says this which gives you the info you need to hook it up:

Each module allows for 3 different power options, but you should only power with one option at any given time! The recommended power input through the SMA output port (for bias-tee capable SDRs like the NESDR SMArTee XTR) is 3V-5V DC.

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Everybody over at the Facebook SDRPlay message board is having fun decoding L band ACARS and STD-C messages.  One of the SDRPlay guys, Mr Mike Ladd, put together an excellent guide on using the RSP devices to decode L band traffic.  It has invigorated that Facebook community somewhat and I’m excited to see everyone trying it out and posting their results/questions.   Mike posts excellent tutorials and videos and if you fancy yourself an SDR enthusiast or hobbyist you owe it to yourself to check out his videos.

ACARS AERO messages are for, you guessed it, Aircraft,  and Enhanced Group Call (EGC) messages are Maritime notices and warnings.   These messages are from Inmarsat Satellites and the one I use specifically is Inmarsat 4-F3.  Clicking on the image will show you that its geosynchronous orbit covers North and South America.

Inmarsat (click to enlarge)

Inmarsat 4-F3 is located at 97.6 West.  Strongly recommended to get an app called Dish Align to locate the satellite.

So to pull this off you need:

• An RTL-SDR device capable of delivering Bias T voltage to the antenna.  For today I used an SDRPlay RSPDuo.  There are certainly cheaper devices out there though.
• An L band antenna such as this one or an old Othernet L Band Patch antenna from the old version 2 hardware.  I had one of the old L Band Patch antennas laying around already. You might be able to find one on eBay or of course make your own..
• A Windows laptop with a little bit of OOMPH
• Software such as SDRUno if you are using an SDRPlay device or SDR# if you may be using an Airspy device.
• Virtual Audio Cable to get the audio from your SDR software into Syctale-C software.
• And of course Syctale-C software

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