I am a newcomer to the SatNOGS community. Today, I tried capturing a pass of the historic NOAA-2 (Observation #14595070) using my station (4950 - jp7dvx).
As expected, the result came out as “Bad” with just fragments, but I couldn’t resist tuning into a spacecraft launched way back in 1972. Just knowing that there is still some kind of signal wandering through space gives me a thrill!
I am still learning the ropes of ground station operations. If anyone else has tried tracking these vintage weather satellites or has tips for better setups, I would love to hear from you.
Just checked and realized the VHF transmitters went silent long ago—what a surprise! Chasing the ghost of a half-century-old spacecraft turns out to be quite an adventure. YUKIO
Since I’m still quite new to this, I noticed NOAA-2 is still listed on the scheduling page for VHF/APT. Could anyone kindly explain how these historical or inactive transmitters are managed in the scheduler? Just curious to learn more about how the system works! YUKIO
I just set both APT transmitters to invalid. We might change the mode, the satellite still transmits carriers, at least in S-band when in direct sunlight.
@fredy should we change the mode to unknown or keep the APT transmitters disabled on this old beast ?
Thank you, @pe2bz, for taking care of it and sharing such interesting insights about this old beast! It’s amazing to see how the community keeps the database accurate. Happy tracking! YUKIO
