Regarding Observation 1128751 …
An observation with a Doppler shift and improperly centered observations because of the SatNOGS doppler correction automatically applied is failed or bad?
https://wiki.satnogs.org/Operation#Rating_observations
A satellite has clearly been detected…
Good
You should mark observations as “Good” when it is clear from the waterfall and/or audio recording that a satellite is present. Keyboard Shortcut ‘g’
Bad
You should mark observations as “Bad” when by examining the waterfall and/or audio it is obvious that there was no satellite detected in this observation. Keyboard Shortcut ‘b’
Failed
You should mark observations as “Failed” when the station failed entirely: the waterfall and/or audio is empty or not present, or there’s too much noise. Keyboard Shortcut ‘f’
Your assumption is entirely wrong 
The doppler is applied and what you can see in the waterfall is terrestric, possibly local, interference. You should mark it as bad (as you’ve done already)!
Hi @crsimpson,
As @DL4PD wrote, the client performs doppler correction, so if everything works fine on a station, you expect to see the signal of the satellite centered and in a straight line.
In your case, there is no signal, so you should vetted it as bad. However I can see that at the same time there is observation 1128780 which received the same satellite. This means that either the pass of the satellite was hidden from your station or the station setup cannot receive that kind of signals or your station has some issues. In the first and the second case still the observation should be vetted as bad, but if it is the third case then probably it should be re-vetted as failed.
I know that vetting is a complicated process right now, there is an open discussion and plan to change this soon and make it simpler, which will also help us to automate this process.
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I’m sorry, and I hate being a broken record, but this is a BAD observation, not a FAILED one.
Fredy, the wiki guidelines for vetting are clear. If you are not going to abide by them, why even have them?
OR PLEASE UPDATE THE VETTING GUIDELINES!!!
- Bad
- You should mark observations as “Bad” when by examining the waterfall and/or audio it is obvious that there was no satellite detected in this observation. Keyboard Shortcut ‘b’
- Failed
- You should mark observations as “Failed” when the station failed entirely: the waterfall and/or audio is empty or not present, or there’s too much noise. Keyboard Shortcut ‘f’
This is exactly why we have opened the thread for discussing to change vetting.
Moving from [good, bad, failed] to something that is clearer and simpler like [has signal, doesn’t have signal], will be more helpful. Failed then, if they are not trivial cases will be visible by simple analysis like the one I did in my previous post… are there other stations at the same time that got signal, does this happen a lot with the station that didn’t get the signal, then probably the station has issues, raise a flag/send an email.
Also with the coming of waterfall data instead of image and this simpler model of vetting, guidelines will be clear and we will be able to automate this process and there will be no need for the human factor to judge objectively, like in the observation above.
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No reason to shout! 
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Fredy - my point is that “simple analysis” doesn’t play into the current vetting process AT ALL.
The vetting guidelines are clear:
-
the waterfall is present
-
the audio is present
-
there is no excessive noise
All three requirements for “Failed” are NOT met.
However, the lone requirement for “Bad” IS met.
There is no “analysis” option. By marking this “failed”, you are simply stating that “this station isn’t capable of hearing this particular satellite on this particular pass”, but the casual user has no way of knowing this. As I’ve stated in the past, if there is no way to add a note to vet - you are suggesting that this station was not working correctly during this pass, when in actuallity - it was working just fine yet for whatever reason didn’t “hear” the satellite. It’s literally a textbook “bad” observation and should be vetted as such. Your private knowledge of the station and satellite should NOT come into play as it essentially poisons all other observations for the station and the satellite. What happens on the next observation at that station that looks identical yet your private knowledge of the satellite not transmitting causes you to vet as “Bad”? A casual observer sees both observation side by side, vetted by the same person, that look identical, yet one is “failed” and one is “bad”. Any scientist would look at that and say “bad data - throw it all out”. We need to stick to the vetting guidelines or else all of the vets are worthless.
Summary:
Vetting guidelines aren’t followed because they aren’t clear. @fredy Is there a way I can contribute to a solution? I mean this seems fairly simple. Why hasn’t the change been made?
My imperfect suggestion:
- Ideal: Everything worked perfectly.
- Functioning: Signal still present but something went wrong.
- Failed: Signal not present.
Hello @crsimpson,
I will agree with @K3RLD that I should have followed the wiki guidelines and keep the observations bad and just send the email that something looked like wrong with the station. I’m going to fix that as soon as possible, sorry for any inconvenience.
As we have discussed in the past, for the future we should separate failed observations from good/bad vetting and make vetting well-defined and simple. I’m not aware of the technical aspect, @fredy should be able to give more details on that matter.
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I think this does show that perhaps bunny-ears antennas are probably not the best for listening to satellite signals…