I had always wanted to try and receive a signal from a satellite using my scanner. After some research I found that I may actually be able to pick up the NOAA Weather Satellites as they pass overhead.

Now, during normal operation of my scanner, it is usually just hooked up to my TV antenna which is affixed to the roof of my two story house. For normal operation, I’ve actually found this to work quite well. I’m able to pickup pretty much anything I’d like with reasonable quality… Except for the NOAA Weather Satellites.

Using the setup described above, believe it or not, can work… Not well, but, it can… The thing is, conditions need to be just right. The TV antenna is a highly directional piece of hardware which is pointing toward Green Bay where most of the TV broadcasts are located. In order to receive ANYTHING of quality a satellite would need to be located in the sky exactly where my TV antenna is pointed. This only happened once and I was able to receive a pretty good image for about 5% of a satellite pass. Pretty exciting considering my very standard setup! But, I wanted more!

It had been about a year since I last looked at trying to get something better and after some research I found that an excellent antenna for picking up these signals are Quadrifilar Helix Antennas (137 MHz). There are plenty of plans online for building these antenna, but again as with most instructions online, I found them to be incomplete and not answering some of the questions that I had. A lot of plans online seem to assume some type of basic knowledge which I just seem to lack. One of the main reasons I like to document the way I do the projects and post my results… good or bad.

The design below is based heavily on George Goodroe’s (KF4CPJ) design. Some Googling will reveal a couple projects done by people recreating this antenna. My hope here is to add to the content available to help others build these excellent antennas and hopefully answer some of the questions I had as well. The link above lists pretty much all of the materials needed.