SDR radio: listen to the weather, catch pictures from space
October 2026
A radio stick the size of a USB flash drive, a computer and two metal rods: that is all you need to hear weather balloons climbing above Prague and to catch a picture of Europe straight from a weather satellite. Our new SDR radio unit shows how.
What you will do
- First listen with RTL-SDR: set up an RTL-SDR Blog V3 or V4 and tune in to FM radio.
- Build a ground station: the right antenna length, angle and direction for each signal.
- Listen to the weather: weather balloons from Praha-Libuš, airport weather and VOLMET on shortwave.
- Pictures from weather satellites: record a Meteor-M pass and decode it with SatDump.
- Pictures from the ISS: slow-scan TV pictures from the space station.
The antenna is the secret
Every arm of an antenna should be about a quarter of the wavelength: arm (cm) ≈ 7350 / frequency (MHz). For weather satellites that makes 53.4 cm.
For satellites, open the two arms to 120°, lay the antenna flat and point the opening of the V north or south:
When does the satellite fly over?
Our sky dashboard sky.newt.cz shows for our ground station where every weather satellite and the ISS is, how high it will climb and when the next pass is. It runs on space-telemetry, an open-source exporter you can run for your own station too.
V3 or V4?
We use both. Everything in the unit works with either; the V4 also hears shortwave without any tricks, which helps with VOLMET.
Start with the first listen, and have fun listening to the sky!
