Weather fax newbie question

[peter2407]

Just bought a Sony 7600 radio with SSB and want to test weather fax and navtex from home-ish. Will probably go somewhere high in the New Forest. Can anyone tell me the best likely station to tune to as a test please? And times of broadcast?

 

[cpedw]

Frank Singleton can probably answer all your questions, and more. Start here http://weather.mailasail.com/Franks-Weather/Radiofax-Schedules-Northwood-And-Offenbach for the schedules and follow links for lots more information.
Now I check the page carefully, it says of Northwood NOTE - This service appears to have been discontinued. The German service may still be working but the whole scheme is getting out of date.

Derek

 

[nimbusgb]

definitive reference up to date feb 10 here

 

[peter2407]

Thanks

Thank you both. North wood looks like its a continuous broadcast - is there a broadcast time that is more useful to yotties within them?

 

[Pye_End]

The surface analysis comes up fairly frequently, and the forecats pressure charts eg.
0500/1700 SURFACE ANALYSIS 120/576 00/12
0512/1712 24 HOUR SURFACE PROGNOSIS 120/576 00/12
0524/1724 48 HOUR SURFACE PROGNOSIS 120/576
The pdf in post 3 is the place to look for the most convenient.
Times are aren't always spot on - often several minutes late.

However I am most concerned my the news that the service has been discontinued. My set is on the boat, and I cannot find anything on the web. Can anybody confirm this?

 

[Conachair]

Northwood and Hamburg you should recieve. Hamburg seems to transmit a test tone most of thje time even if not transmitting.

SFC analysis and SFC prog ar ethe most useful ones. Same as here..

http://www.cincfleetwoc.com/HF-Fax/North_Atlantic/NEATL_AA_SurfaceAnalysis_UNCL_0000_T000.png.html



Or DWD rtty on 10.1Khz. Settings for DWD on Jvcomm are

mode:0
Type:Baudot
Baudrate:50
shift:50
PTC-11 type:baudot
# of bits : 5
centre frequency:400.

You should get that with the radio sitting next to a window hopefully.

 

[hrchivers]

A good place to start would be Northwood on 4610 kHz, in the evening - try an hour either side of sunset.

On the 7600 you need to tune off the nominal frequency, so for 4610 (I think) you would tune to 4608 SSB USB, then use the 'fine tune' to give the correct audio spectrum on your demodulator.

One thing that I've noticed on the 7600 is that the Weatherfax quality degradres significantly before the low battery warning - worth ensuring you have charged batteries or are using external power.

good luck

 

[ffiill]

Nothing wrong with Northwood as far as I am aware-Bracknell was discontinued a few years ago.

 

[AngusMcDoon]

Some here have reported that if you are receiving into a laptop, disconnect the power supply and run on bettery for batter reception.

 

[ffiill]

Yachtcom has lists of useful frequencies-worth remembering volumet-they give out continual verbal weather information on short wave from all European airports including up here in Scotland Stornaway;Tiree;Prestwich;Belfast etc etc
NOAA provide WEatherfax frequencies and daily schedules for all worldwide weatherfax transmissions.
The German Met office Hamburg provide similar schedules for their RTTY transmissions.
NOAA also provide details of worldwide weather buoys.
Most useful RTTY data are the station reports which include the buoys and civilian ships plus usually with only a lat and long military data.
Just a comment on tuning-once you are receiving the transmission with RTTY if you have got it tuned either you will receive a call sign and frequency data;for reports the actual words and for coastal stations four symbol strings of numbers which after a few minutes will be interpreted by your receiving programme as station reports.
Similarly fine tune the Weathrfax by looking at image quality whilst tweaking the fine tuner.
Finally the German Met Offce meterologists will happily respond to any queries you might have about the information they provide.