Friday 24 May 2013

Project 8: Turnstile Antenna for Weather (WX) Satellites


                           This turned out to be quite quick (about 4 hours) and easy. I used VK4LHD's construction method. The materials were under $50.
Only 8 parts

                           The aluminum tubing is cut into 6 lengths : 2 x 1200mm for the base reflectors and 4x 520mm for the top elements. These are inserted into a 40mm diameter/1000mm long pvc pipe with 1 hole drilled at 520mm  from the top and the second hole 550mm from the top and at 90 degrees to the first hole.
The 90 degree holes
                       
Bottom section
And top section done
The 4 way junction box is mounted to the top of the pipe by inserting a block into the end and screwing the junction box to it. The elements are drilled at one end to accomodate the terminals for the coax cable harness. I drilled 2 holes in the sides of the junction box to allow an access feed point for the coax.
The drilled elements
                         
The finished product
The turnstile mounted
Thats basically all there is to it. On the first pass of  NOAA 19 today, the image quality is vastly superior to any antenna i have tried before. Some more fine tuning and i should have some decent images. Here are some NOAA 18's after a bit of tinkering with WXtoIMG:
NOAA 18 26/5/2013*

NOAA 18 26/5/2013*
                                                 * Received with the RTL E4000 and SDR#                      






 

1 comment:

  1. That's excellent mate, and well explained. Good stuff. Should serve you well for years.

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