purple_stars wrote:
anyone getting weather information directly from satellite ? i've seen
a number of stationary satellite antennas for sailboats so someone must
be using them. how do you do that, are you using your laptop to
receive and convert the data into weather maps or do you have some kind
of a dedicated satellite weather device for doing it ?

by the way, great article warrenj, thanks for sharing.

agree wayne, pactor modem and radio look like a terrific solution for
email. i don't like that the code for the mail program is so closed,
that is, that there's only a windows version of it and the protocol
doesn't seem to be published, but otherwise it great stuff.

Wayne.B wrote:

On 15 May 2006 13:56:19 -0700, "
wrote:

A few people have emailed asking how, on our budget, we can afford to
pull down weather faxes while on passage.
The system is detailed in this little article:

http://www.micoverde.com/articles/articles_wx.html

That's all true but if you are cruising offshore you should really
have 2 way SSB capability, and with the addition of a PACTOR modem you
get EMAIL, GRIB files, and error free transmissions of the fax data
via EMAIL attachments. There are really significant quality benefits,
and for far less cost than satellite internet.


I receive the Polar Orbiting satellites. I use a Hamtronics R139
receiver which outputs the decoded signal to the sound card input on the
laptop. There are several software packages, but the best I have found
is WXtoimg. An circular polarized egg beater antenna works best but I
found the my 5/8 wave 2 meter antenna mounted on a stainless plate on my
arch works almost as good. I to get a few fade lines occasionally.
Currently NOAA 15,17,and 18 have operational VHF downlinks. See
http://www.oso.noaa.gov/poes for information.
krj