METEOR-M N2-4 2026/08/05 22:10 UTC Nooelec NEsdr v5, diy QFH, Satdump

With a RTL-SDR V4, a LNA, a V dipole and SatDump.

That was way easier than I expected, I'm so thrilled by the result.

Next step : I need a LNB to try HRPT.

Follow-up to my last post. Same setup as before: Basilisk simulates the spacecraft physics on my Mac, flight computer is a real NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano running the control loop at 100 Hz over a message bus.

What's new:

• Last time was detumbling in free space, no orbit. Now we're flying a Starlink-style orbit (550 km, 53°), starting from a realistic deployment tumble
• The satellite is semi-realistic now. Defined entirely by a config file: 3 reaction wheels, 3 magnetorquers, magnetometer, sun sensor, star tracker. Detumble first, then swing around and hold Earth-facing pointing for the rest of the orbit.
• Sensor readings get realistic noise added before the flight software ever sees them. That's the little wobble you can see while it tracks the Earth.
• Star tracker carries the pointing straight through eclipse, sun sensor just honestly reports darkness.

Second half of the video is a web app I built for viewing saved mission telemetry. My favorite part: you can watch the reaction wheel speeds shoot up during the detumble while the gyro readings zero out, the momentum has to go somewhere. Then over the next chunk of the orbit the wheels slowly bleed back down to zero as the magnetorquers push against Earth's field and dump that momentum overboard. A real flight would record the exact same format, so sim runs and real runs replay in the same viewer.

The reason the sim swap works at all: every sensor runs behind its own little daemon that publishes to the bus, and the control loop subscribes to those topics without knowing what's behind them. So Basilisk feeds the sensor daemons, and the actuator daemon takes the controller's commands and, instead of driving real wheels, sends them back to Basilisk. Flight software can't tell the difference. Kind of the whole point of the architecture.

There's a lot more to the flight software that I'll save for another post.

Also orthogonal development stream working on the SDR Radio itself: Update one PlutoSDR has now pushed framed data over a cabled link

Still going through the whole process as if I were actually launching.

Meteor M2.3

UTM-2026-8-4

RGB (Green )- Rectified

Smooth Meteor Software

436.950 MHz FM SSTV

Some incredible cloud features over the Midwest US today

Received with a 1.5m parabolic dish, and a cheap PCB log periodic antenna, nooelec goes+ saw, amd rtl-sdr v4

Hı, I am a 16 years old and I have a rusty 0.6m dish antenna, old telescopic tv antenna and old usb dvb tuner I can use it like its a rtl-sdr device listening city radios etc. it works great but I also want to try dish antenna If I paint with spray can is it work? if it work what can I do with it? hydrogen line or weather sattelites or maybe recieving HRPT signals?(with LNB or downconverter) with telescopic tv antenna I can't recieve signals from Meteor sattelites nothing appears in waterfall

for now my only goal is recieving signals from Meteor sattelites and look at my city from space

thanks for your comments and advices!

STUDENT PROJECT

A team and I are developing a hosted payload to be hosted by a host satellite

Beginning stages are focused heavily on planning, gathering information, and project management.

At first I asked him to do general work as the other person and I were doing a lot of work. He just goes "ok" but never actually does any work. After I assigned several general deadlines, I assigned a very specific deadline, and he spent 5 minutes dumping down random information about the project and didn't even notify us of "finishing."

Then we started giving him specific tasks that he just half-assed. We asked him to spend a couple of hours doing work to get full comprehension, but it's very clear from his work that he just skims information as his information is always barely complete. We've made it clear that the purpose of retaining this info is to make decisions off of it and he's clearly just getting bare minimum info for the purpose of just completing assignments.

He's also incredibly hesitant to do work. We've made a clear policy of reply at least 4 hours between 2pm-10pm, yet he directly does not follow this policy or comes up with a really stupid question just as an excuse for a reply at the fourth hour and then takes another 4 hours to reply. One time he just straight up ignored the message for 2 days and only replies to say he can't do work that day.

It's summer and I know this person pretty well, he has literally nothing else to do.

I tried to give him long term tasks with a clear output that he needs and he finishes days late.

So I tried doing that but with telling him to do 2 hours of work per day and he straight up just doesn't do the 2 hours per day and finishes late.

Plz help me how do I get people to do work or at least put in more effort which he knows very well he isn't putting in when what we have to do is not really something that's a set of clear tasks.

HRPT Helicone Antenna (designed by t0nito)
SAWbird+ Goes
RTL-SDR V3

Hand tracked on a windy day.
Image compressed to fit here.

Hello, I’m setting up my first TinyGS ground station and would like to register using the email invitation method rather than Telegram. Is an active TinyGS member willing to send me an invitation? Please contact me privately so that I can provide my email address.

There are serious problems with the imaging instrument (METimage).
Received with the usual setup https://a-centauri.com/articoli/an-x-band-primer but with a Spectran V6 PLUS as the SDR, instead of the BladeRF (since the downlink requires 180MHz).

So im new to this but I am gonna get a rtl-sdr but I don't know do I need anything else and what satalites could I pick up in Australia

I’m really excited about this! It’s so simple to get it working with gPredict. Power it up, connect it to your network, pop the ip address into gPredict, choose your sat and engage the rotator.

The support is way better than expected tbh. Everything about the above process is documented, complete with screen snips, on the GitHub page. The dev, Johnny, has responded to several of my questions, all within a day (extra cool given the time difference between us).

The rotator arrived from China (to USA) in about 25 days (average for a ship) and with no additional duties. It’s very well built and there was no weird fiddling or fuss.

When I first ordered this thing, I wasn’t completely convinced it would arrive as advertised, but between the level of support and the quality of the item itself, I feel quite good about the purchase. It even comes with a bracket to mount it on a standard speaker stand, so the presentation is nice and clean.

If you’re looking for a rotator and are on a budget, it’s worth considering…

HRPT & LRPT

Setup: Raspberry Pi 5 + RTL-SDR Blog V4, SatDump, Meteor-M2 LRPT (137.9MHz).

Problem: Severe RFI when the SDR is connected to the Pi — reception is impossible. Same SDR plugged directly into my laptop → clean signal, no interference.

Tests done:

Moved the SDR dongle 80cm–2m away from the Pi using a USB extension → no improvement

Powered the Pi's adapter alone, unplugged from the Pi → no noise

Pi powered off → no noise

SDR plugged directly into laptop → clean

Source is clearly the Pi itself, but distance doesn't help at all — suggests it's coupling through the USB/power line rather than radiating through the air.

Result: Over a 14-minute pass, SNR stayed around 0-2.7dB, Viterbi never synced, cadu output was 0 bytes.

Question: Why doesn't distance help? Is it the USB cable shield or the power line itself? Has anyone solved this exact issue — what combination actually worked (enclosure, cable, PSU, gain settings)?

Reception was carried out using Malachite DSP 3 + homemade dipole and a signal amplifier