First waterfall from Mumbai, India - Station #4763 Mumbai-RTL-1

sunilkhorwal · April 5, 2026, 7:09am

Hi everyone,

Excited to share my first successful waterfall from
Mumbai, India!

Station: #4763 Mumbai-RTL-1
Hardware: RTL-SDR Blog V4 + Raspberry Pi CM4
Antenna: Stock whip antenna
Setup: Running satnogs-client via Docker

Observation: SITRO-AIS-28 at 401 MHz
Link: SatNOGS Network - Observation 13737295

Special thanks to Fredy Damkalis and Dimitris Papadeas
for scheduling observations on my station from day one!

Looking forward to improving my setup —
next step is building a DIY V-dipole antenna for
better NOAA/Meteor reception.

Any suggestions for improving reception in Mumbai
are welcome!

73, Sunil

PE0SAT · April 5, 2026, 11:09am

Looking at the meta data from the observation you need to change/set the gain value.

The following gain values are supported when using a RTL-SDR

running rtl_test we get:

Found 1 device(s):
  0:  Realtek, RTL2838UHIDIR, SN: 00001985

Using device 0: Generic RTL2832U OEM
Found Rafael Micro R820T/2 tuner
Supported gain values (29): 0.0 0.9 1.4 2.7 3.7 7.7 8.7 12.5 14.4 15.7 16.6 19.7 20.7 22.9 25.4 28.0 29.7 32.8 33.8 36.4 37.2 38.6 40.2 42.1 43.4 43.9 44.5 48.0 49.6 
Sampling at 2048000 S/s.

Without any details on the RF chain, antenna, lna, coax etc you will need to do some experiments on what provides the best results.

Jan | PE0SAT

bali · April 5, 2026, 11:14am

wow. welcome friend!

for meteor m2-3 and meteor m2-4 reception , after you done with your building of v-dipole, i recommend to add meteor decoder.

sunilkhorwal · April 5, 2026, 1:42pm

Hello Bali and Jan (PE0SAT)!

Great news to share after your advice:

Following Jan’s recommendation:
→ Set SATNOGS_RF_GAIN=48.0
→ Immediate improvement in reception!

Results after RF_GAIN fix:
→ First decoded data from SilverSat
(AP2XGW SHAE decoded successfully!)
→ Captured ISS voice communication!
Indian ham VU2LBW calling CQ through ISS!

Following Bali’s recommendations:
→ Migrated to docker-compose
→ Implemented meteor.sh + SatDump
decoder for Meteor M2-3/M2-4
→ Station ready for color weather images!

Next step is building V-dipole antenna
for better reception from Mumbai rooftop.

Thank you both so much — your guidance
made a huge difference for a brand new
station in Mumbai, India!

Will share first Meteor color image
when it’s decoded!

73, Sunil
Station #4763 Mumbai-RTL-1

bali · April 5, 2026, 1:57pm

not meteor m2, but this: (look at norad id - 57166 and 59051)

for transmitter select

bali · April 7, 2026, 5:47am

hello friend. is it work?

sunilkhorwal · April 7, 2026, 7:49am

Hi! Setup is complete, meteor.sh + satdump pipeline is configured and running. I just fixed arm64/armhf architecture mismatch in the container today that was preventing satdump from executing. Waiting for the next high-elevation M2-4/M2-3 pass to confirm actual image output. Will share results soon!

error which was fixed -
bash: line 1: ./satdump: cannot execute: required file not found
ls: cannot access ‘/lib/ld-linux-aarch64.so.1’: No such file or directory

sunilkhorwal · April 7, 2026, 7:58am

Is it a good signal for M2-4/M2-3? - SatNOGS Network - Observation 13752480

bali · April 7, 2026, 8:06am

the first and last waterfall seen good.

dont forget to check the satnogs logs, with this command, to make sure meteor.sh and satdump running correctly:
sudo docker-compose logs -f

in station.env
you can change
SATNOGS_LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG
to
SATNOGS_LOG_LEVEL=INFO

to make the logs shorter.

dont forget restart the docker
sudo docker-compose down && sudo docker-compose up -d

sunilkhorwal · April 7, 2026, 8:19am

Thanks!
Already checked logs and confirmed satdump is executing correctly post fix. Currently have DEBUG level on for now to monitor the first few METEOR passes closely, will switch to INFO once confirmed working.

Container already restarted after applying the fixes. Waiting for next pass.