inmarsat c

[vk2hak]

Hello forum i,m new to satellites and i,m trying to receive inmarsat c with a airspy r2 and a patch antenna on a printed board using satdump i,m not sure which way to point the antenna i,m on the eastcoast Australia thanks in advance justin vk2hak

 

[thebaldgeek]

A few comments that hopefully you find helpful....
You say 'Inmarsat C', but I think you mean L-Band? If not, you need to know that you will need a satellite dish 2-meters or bigger to get C-Band ADSC....
Ok, presuming that you really do mean L-Band, the second issue is that you have picked about the worst possible antenna to try and get up and running with. The blue PCB and small GPS hockey pucks are just not up to the task. The smallest L-Band antenna I can recommend is the RTL-SDR active patch antenna, the one about the size of a small dinner plate.
Beyond that, with that antenna or better, just put your AirSpy software on the 1.6 GHz band and point it north-east and then move it around till the signal peaks, it really is that easy.
You can find screenshots of 143E and its frequencies at the bottom of this webpage, I suggest you start at the top and read your way down.

How to build an L-Band ground station.

Rough notes on how to go about setting up the hardware and software for ACARS decoding.

thebaldgeek.github.io

 

[vk2hak]

thank you the bald geek yes the l band and i,ve seen the active patch antennas you mean thanks for the reply

 

[spongella]

OM, I remember seeing articles about this on RTL-SDR dot com. I even built a system to detect these signals from one of the articles but that was years ago. Had no luck decoding the signals though.

RTL-SDR Tutorial: Decoding Inmarsat STD-C EGC Messages

Inmarsat is a communications service provider with several geostationary satellites in orbit. They provide services such as satellite phone communications, broadband internet, and short text and data messaging services. Geostationary means that the satellites are in a fixed position in the sky...

www.rtl-sdr.com

Building an L-band helical antenna for Inmarsat

Previously in August of this year we wrote an article showing how to decode Inmarsat satellite STD-C NCS EGC messages with an RTL-SDR. Inspired by this article, RTL-SDR.com reader Mario Filippi, N2HUN has written in to show us how he built an L-band helical antenna to receive these signals. A...

www.rtl-sdr.com