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
We have two options, the one is to keep the APT ones as active, given that there is the carrier.
The other one is to set APT inactive and create a new transmitter for the carrier, with the UNKNOWN mode and a comment in description that it is carrier and active only under sunlight.
A huge thanks to @fredy, @pe2bz, and all the core contributors! It’s your dedication and effort behind the scenes that keep this database accurate and the community so great. Thanks for making this such a wonderful place to learn and explore!
