Thank you to RTL-SDR.COM reader Meti for submitting his blog post showcasing how he successfully received weather satellite images from the geostationary Elektro-L3 satellite. Impressively, Meti achieved this with a home-built 11-turn helix antenna, even with the satellite positioned at a relatively low elevation of just 13 degrees.
Typically, a satellite dish is used to receive Elektro L3. As an example, our 70cm diameter Discovery Dish with linear feed can do this easily, and achieve an SNR of about 5-6 dB. However, as Meti shows, it is possible to receive this satellite even without a dish, and as he shows, an SNR of 1.5 dB is sufficient for decoding a perfect image.
Meti's antenna is an 11-turn RHCP helix made of copper wire, with a 17 x 17cm ground plane. In his post, he also notes a few interesting findings, noting that the height of the antenna off the ground is critical, rotating the helix can help, interference from cell towers can cause issues, and bending the corners of the ground plane can help.
In the rest of the post, Meti also shows how well the helix antenna works at receiving weather satellite signals from polar orbiting L-Band satellites like Meteor M2-3.
