Reciving Satellite Image from NOAA19 with a DIY Antenna

For Chaos Communication Camp 2019 I was inspired by The Thought Emporium who has made an excellent video about receiving images from weather satellites. If you want to try it yourself you can follow their detailed written instructions.

They teach you how to build a double-cross antenna that consists of 4 dipole antennas (2 pieces of bare wires) mounted together. They are arranged, one in each cardinal direction and tipped at an angle. This configuration creates an omnidirectional antenna that can receive signals regardless of where the satellite is in the sky. This is what my final setup looked like:

With my HackRF connected it was time to receive an image. The NOAA satellites return two images at once. In the visible spectrum can see the sun rising in the east:

In the thermal infrared satellite image you can clearly see the clouds and the warm baltic see:

The camp was located in the north of Germany in the Ziegeleipark Mildenberg Zehdenick (53° 01’ 48” N, 13° 18’ 27” E). For reference, this is roughly the same area in google maps: