Cranktown City Assembles Massive Backyard Satellite Ground Station to Capture Weather Data From Orbit

Cranktown City spotted an eight-foot dish online and decided the usual starter kit of a small Yagi or a handheld weather dish simply would not do for a first serious look at signals coming down from space. What followed was a full-scale articulating mount planted on a large post set into a concrete pad, with a custom metal base fabricated underneath to hold the electronics that both receive the incoming radio and command the dish’s motion. That base carries a big metal gear driven by a wheelchair motor for the side-to-side azimuth sweep and a linear actuator that handles the up-and-down elevation, giving the whole assembly enough travel and speed to follow satellites as they cross the sky.

Mounting the dish became something of a separate project in and of itself. The reflector is not entirely uniform, and it must be positioned in a very specific direction relative to the feed. So getting it on the frame required considerable attention and tricky alignment work once the structure was up. A circularly polarized helical antenna made of a 3D-printed L-band design is slotted into the focal point. The computers executing the tracking data from the Skyfield library provided the calculations to steer the dish, pulling orbital data and instructing the motors to reposition the dish so it remains locked onto the GOES weather satellites while downloading data streams.

They have also included wind protection. A sensor is present to monitor what is going on, and if the gusts become too powerful, it will move the dish to a tucked-away position so that it does not receive a full blast, similar to a sail on a boat. Some have commented that the azimuth drive is pretty quick, and that it could follow aircraft or even the ISS on a pass, which is pretty cool, but some have stated that the gearing ratio may have been set too high, and that a second gear might help with the smoothness. Also says that, annoyingly, the dish came to them with a bit of a warp from its prior life that still needs to be fixed.

Once everything is turned up and in the proper location, the station turns off and begins gathering weather photos and data from GOES, which is transmitted out. You don’t need something this large to get started with satellite listening because smaller antennas work well for the majority of transmissions. This thing leaves Cranktown City with a capable small platform that should be able to snag all of the weather passes they require while also leaving room to experiment with some radio astronomy if they become interested. The entire contraption just sits out there in a big ol’ open field, with the metal frame and concrete pad keeping the dish stable while the motors quietly go about their business of following whatever is overhead.