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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

This seems like a lot of work.

We used to do this with a $30 shortwave radio and a Commodore 64.

Maybe the NOAA WEFAX transmissions aren't in shortwave anymore?

When you're picking up a radio-facsimile transmission, you're picking it up from a ground-station that's transmitting a weather forecast product that's generated by the National Weather Service and intended for reception with consumer-level technology.

What's described in the article is receiving raw imagery directly from the satellite; so it's not really the same thing.

It’s just a very thorough doc that takes you from zero to hero. The process is extremely simple. I used to do this back when the RTL SDR stuff just started and the ridiculously bad antennas that i built that still worked were pretty remarkable.

It blew my mind back in the 80s when I read an article on how to get my humble home computer receive satellite maps. Unfortunately I didn't own a shortwave radio and I couldn't convince my parents to buy one because the weather was already on the local news every night.

One of the early articles on the subject is a fun read: https://archive.org/details/198502Rainbow/page/n41/mode/2up

Good times, I've done this with DWD (German meteorological service) in the 90s, using HamComm [0]

This project in the article however, listens directly to satellites, and not to a LF/HF ground-based station like we used to do.

[0] https://www.pervisell.com/ham/hc1.htm

Oops, lost my memory there for a bit: it was probably using the same DIY "Hamcomm modem", and using JVFAX (or similar) software running under DOS.

This is the image direct from the satellite rather than a rebroadcast. You see what the satellite sees as it passes over in realtime.

WEFAX is still a thing from what I can tell, but I haven't been able to pick anything up yet as I suspect my "random wire" antenna doesn't have enough random wire yet.

Shortwave is really tough in urban environments these days because of all the electrical noise from poorly-designed electronic devices. If you live in a single family home, try turning off your power at the breaker box, powering your radio off of a 12 V battery, and see how well you can do. Alternatively, take your station to a rural campground.

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