Nooelec GOES Weather Satellite Mesh Antenna - 21dBi Parabolic Antenna w/ 1.7GHz Center Frequency, 200MHz+ Bandwidth, LMR400 Feed Cable with Male SMA Connector, Mounting Hardware, & 2 Year Warranty

The antenna came with an undocumented bonus! The dish to pipe system has been upgraded. Included is a mount (see PIX) that allows the elevation and azimuth to be adjusted while the dish is firmly secured to the vertical pipe. The original 'L' plate is included, marked "Alternate Mounting Bracket". The new system is FAR superior: After locking the dish down on the pipe, the azmiuth and elevation are easily tweaked. Once in position, two nuts are tightened and done. This new mount is not mentioned anywhere in the documentation - it is attached to the dish exactly as the original 'L' bracket would have been... There are issues with the original 'L' bracket, with the elevation slot. The clamp holding the entire dish assembly must be loose to adjust AZ/EL, while keeping the clamp stable. Adjusting one causes the other to slip and a third arm is really helpful. I know this for fact, as I have another 2' solid dish using the exact same 'L' bracket. The new AZ/EL mount alone makes the price of this dish acceptable. OK, in conjunction with the NooElec SAW+GOES filter/amplifier driving 20' of double shielded RG-55 cable (53 Ohms), the dish performs fine, in a snowstorm here. The SDR here is the RSP1a by SDRPlay, and SATdump software is used for decoding the images. The SAW filter and amp must be mounted at the pigtail lead from the dish. Any additional cable between the dish and SAW WILL degrade overall performance. My SAW is powered by an external bias-tee between the SDR and cable end in the shack, as the RSP1a lacks sufficient current capability on it's bias-tee. Note that the NooElec SAW+Goes is NOT waterproof. As can be just seen in the PIX, I used a 5" long pill bottle, with a hole drilled in the top to just accept the pigtail lead. After connecting the pigtail and output coax, the SAW slides up into the bottle, and coax seal waterproofs the top of the assembly. That said, as others have indicated, the overall quality of the dish is marginal to poor. Fit and finish is rough. There are sharp, unfinished edges between the dish mesh sectors that can cut skin. I gave a 5-Star rating due to the inclusion of the superior AZ/EL mounting system. Big PLUS. I installed this rig during a snowfall...note the mount PIX. The mount has two bushings at 90 degrees from each other, with a long 10mm bolt. When loose, the azmiuth and elevation are easily adjusted - there are detents on the mount to make positioning easier. Once set, simply tighten the two bolts ... no messing with the mount to pipe brackets. I may be wrong, but NooElec does not manufacture this kit. The antenna boom assemble has Chinese labeling, and no pains were taken on the dish fit and finish. Have Fun! UPDATE after several days of perfect reception: Observing the picture of the mount, note the coax pigtail exiting the feed antenna boom. It is impeding the elevation - it is just about maxed out at 39 degrees due to the pigtail. Simply reversing (rotate 180 degrees) the dish on the mount places the pigtail BELOW the elevation adjust, allowing full 90 degrees of EL if desired. This new mount is lights out good!

While it's only a dipole, which means you take a 3dB (half power) hit on a RHCP signal, it still works phenomenally well for GOES. Mine is on a AZ/EL tracking system, so I t also works phenomenally on HRT signals from NOAA and meteor. You HAVE to use the SAWBIRD filter with this antenna for GOES, and it HAS TO be right at the antenna - not 10' away. other than that, works great, and the price point was decent too.

So I really want to give this antenna 5 stars, but it just felt disingenuous to do so. Let me explain. I started putting this together at 6:30 AM and by 10:30 AM I was receiving images. This included some troubleshoot time on my receiver set up. I already had a receiver (blog V4) setup outside for INMARSAT reception with a helix antenna. I purchased a mid size tripod to set on my deck with the antenna. This worked well. My setup is Antenna - LNA - Bias T injector - Blog V4- Active USB cable to windows 11 PC in the house with SatDump…. So bottom line the antenna works. Entire setup works fine. I am getting an SNR avg of 5ish… So why not a 5 star review? Well the antenna has a few assembly issues. It would seem to me that the 2 pieces of the grid could match together a little better. Also, the feed horn could have a completely redesigned mount for it. I put this antenna together by myself however it would’ve been handy to have a second person available to help hold the antenna while you’re screwing things together… parts didn’t seem to fit exactly right until you put the nuts and bolts in and kind of snug them up. It just seem to me that it would not be very difficult to have a better design for the for the grid mesh pieces to fit together and then a separate plate for the feed horn that is not be part of the mounting solution to the mast…. Also the tiny screw that hold the reflector on the feed horn does not get snug yes it hold the reflector in place but its does allow the reflector to move around. A drop of glue would solve this. Also when you put the nuts and bolts in you will scrape the paint on the antenna. This will lead to corrosion for sure. So have either a spray can of white paint or something else that you can touch up the bolts with to avoid having rust and corrosion problems later on down the road. Again the antenna works fine, you must have an LNA for it and a steady mount. Some general knowledge of pointing the antenna will help as well. This was not tough to put together but it could have been much easier, or have an extra set of hands. Hoping Nooelec gets the S Band feed out soon as I would like to give it a go. If you want to receive full disk pictures this antenna ( I would think the full kit as well) will work just fine.

Product and packaging arrived as described

With this antenna, combined with the Nooelec SAWbird for GOES signals, I can achieve a Viterbi correction rate of around 70 per packet from GOES-16. Of course, signal quality will vary from location to location, but I am *extremely* pleased with this antenna. I had previously been struggling with a different 19dBi, 1.9GHz center frequency mesh antenna I had bought three years previously. It used to average around 350 Vit. in my location, but a month ago something broke and I could no longer get any error rate below 650, and I was dropping about half of all incoming packets. I was worried about buying this new antenna: worried that either my problem was not the antenna at all, and worried that this new antenna would not perform any better than my old one. I'm happy to say my worries were unfounded. Even just holding this new antenna by hand, without stable mounting, I was able to get a better error rate than I had ever seen on my old mismatched antenna. It turns out antenna tuning matters! Who knew. My downlink is rock-solid again, and I'm back to accumulating images.

I appreciate that Nooelec provides detailed spec sheets and instructions through their own website. Setting up this antenna was straightforward and it worked well with a GOES-18 receiver chain

Peut-être que j'ai eu un coup de malchance avec mon produit, comme le mentionnent les avis. Je suis un opérateur radioamateur et ce n'est pas ma première transaction avec Nooelec pour des produits de LOISIRS. En général, c'est assez précis et les informations fournies reflètent fidèlement la réalité, mais ce qui est surtout important, c'est que les produits sont constants. Concernant l'antenne, je vais tout de même demeurer concis dans mes commentaires. Si vous êtes novice, envisagez peut-être de devoir acquérir des vises plus longues ou de travaille un peu le métal de l'antenne afin que les vises passent à travers les trois structures au niveau du beam central. Cependant, elle présente une belle apparence et fonctionne correctement sur les signaux des divers satellites après 45 à 60 minutes de mise en position.