Many thanks Bernard for these excellent images. They are much
appreciated. I am amazed at the resolution from the newest Meteosat.

I know that details of equipment, software, are on your website, but
any ideas what it might cost to set up the equipment myself? I have a
couple of "old" computers which I gather would be adequate so I am
really interested in receiver, tracker, costs of software, etc. I
realise you cannot be precise but a ball-park figure would be useful.

What of course I would want to be able to do is to get that sort of
quality of satpic on a more regular basis, say every 30 minutes, for my
gliding activities. It would be especially useful when I am preparing
forecasts at gliding competitions.

Jack

Hello Jack,
Many thanks.
There are a lot of details about how to go about receiving MSG-1 data, and
these can be found on David Taylor's excellent web site. Click on MSG on his
main menu.

http://www.satsignal.net/

To get the ground equipment, dish, receiver/decoder card etc, you could do
far worse than join the GEO group, to gain access to their shop.

http://www.geo-web.org.uk/
http://www.geo-web.org.uk/shop.html

If you already have the PC, then the rest of the equipment costs a little
over £100, and you will have to get a (free) licence from the Met Office,
via EUMETSAT. They will supply an USB dongle to allow reception, and this
costs E100, includes software. In addition you will need a mast or fixings
for the wall, unless you think you can get away with a free standing dish on
the patio/lawn. Also you will need to purchase a co-axial cable to link dish
to PC, cost me about £30 made up with connectors, from the local satellite
TV shop.But David Taylor's site has full details.
Your PC will need to be quite fast. I built one just for this job, using a
2.8 GHz Celeron processor, 1.5 GB RAM and 120 GB hard drive. It receives and
displays the images with no problem.
You get HRIT (high resolution) images every 15 minutes, and also whole earth
data in 11 spectral channels. Also there is a relay of data from other
geostationary satellites every 3 hours.

Best of luck

--

Bernard Burton
Wokingham, Berkshire, UK.

Satellite images at:
www.btinternet.com/~wokingham.weather/wwp.html
wrote in message
ups.com...
Many thanks Bernard for these excellent images. They are much
appreciated. I am amazed at the resolution from the newest Meteosat.

I know that details of equipment, software, are on your website, but
any ideas what it might cost to set up the equipment myself? I have a
couple of "old" computers which I gather would be adequate so I am
really interested in receiver, tracker, costs of software, etc. I
realise you cannot be precise but a ball-park figure would be useful.

What of course I would want to be able to do is to get that sort of
quality of satpic on a more regular basis, say every 30 minutes, for my
gliding activities. It would be especially useful when I am preparing
forecasts at gliding competitions.

Jack

That's all good stuff, but I'm not sure if my technical skills are up
to it. I rather doubt it. My 18 year old son certainly would be
capable but trying to persuade him is another matter.

I'll think about it.

Jack