Hardware
Explore Software Defined Radio — by Wolfram Donat (23 / 30)
👈 Chapter 5 Listening to Satellites | TOC | Software 👉
The signal these satellites broadcast is right-hand circular-polarized, which means you won’t be able to pick it up using the little antenna that came with your SDR dongle. A few antenna options are available to you, including a turnstile antenna, a quadrifilar helix antenna, or a V-dipole antenna. (For a more in-depth discussion of these and a few other antenna designs, make sure you check out the chapter on antenna theory and design.)
Although all of these options will work without any problems, it turns out that the easiest option to build and use is actually a set of old TV rabbit ears, mentioned earlier in the book.
To pick up the APT transmissions using these rabbit ears, there are three requirements for the antenna that will most likely require you to modify those rabbit ears slightly.
- The two antennas must be spaced 120 degrees apart. Most sets that are currently available only spread to about 90 degrees, so you’ll have to make some small modifications. This may mean simply removing and remounting…
