Creating a Satellite Dish Using an Umbrella

The saveitforparts YouTube channel features many fun and creative projects. You can generally find all types of antennas constructed from various materials used to receive data from weather satellites. Staying true to the name, a recent build posted demonstrates creating a parabolic dish antenna from random materials and utilizing it to successfully receive weather satellite data.

The project video starts with the statement, “If you are like me you have probably wondered what if I want to pick up some weather satellite data and I am out on the road or out on vacation!” He then goes on to jokingly list some items he would be carrying in his pockets which include foil tape, RF cables, magnet wire, a USB cable, an RTL-SDR, and an umbrella among other things. The overall goal of the project is to determine whether these miscellaneous items can be used to detect and display weather satellite images and data.

The construction of the project begins with the antenna. Using the foil tape he coats the underside of the antenna to make a reflective surface for radio waves and mimic the effect of a parabolic dish. Next, a crude helical antenna is molded using the magnet wire. This is then attached to an aluminum food tray and a SAWbird device to create the feed antenna. The SAWbird device is a small module with a SAW filter and a low noise amplifier. The SAW filter is used to reject unwanted signals that can serve as a source of interference while the low noise amplifier is used to amplify the desired signals while minimizing the amount of noise it contributes to the system to achieve the best overall signal to noise ratio (SNR). This essentially completes the design and construction of the antenna.

The next steps involved getting a software defined radio (SDR) program to run successfully on the phone and also communicating successfully with the RTL-SDR dongle. This proved to be one of the more challenging efforts of the project. The first efforts consisted of using a phone that was donated from a viewer. However, the phone was not a typical Android phone and was instead a knock off brand Android device from the China market. After many attempts and just as many failures, using the off-brand phone proved to be a dead end and the daily use Android device had to be used for the project. This proved to provide an effective platform for running the SDR software as well as the Stellarium app for tracking the weather satellites in real time.

Admittedly, the first attempts at receiving weather satellite data failed. The major issue consisted of the helical feed antenna not working well for reception. However, after replacing this antenna with a log periodic directional antenna, weather satellite signals were indeed found and received. It took some battling with the windy weather and rain to get a chance to reliably test the project, however the final tests proved successful. Although it is by no means a state-of-the-art antenna design, it definitely gets a 10 out of 10 for creativity.