RTL-SDR for Satellite Weather – Meteor M2-3+ – Telecommunications, Navigation & Electronics

Introduction

Last Saturday I was able to receive Meteor M2-3 down at Toronto Harbourfront (Ref.1). So I thought it would be interesting to try and receive it from my home location. At Harbourfront, there was some signal loss due to QRM. At my home QTH there was no QRM, but some multipath and obstruction. A generally excellent signal with SNR>10+dB was received.

Equipment Setup

Figure 1 shows the equipment setup. I initially tested the Yagi earlier this spring for operation down at 138MHz (Ref.3) I am also using the same BPF/LNA, as I tested previously (Ref.4). I am using the RTL-SDR V3 because I can power the LNA/BPF from the BiasTee. Reception is by SDR# using the Baseband IQ recorder. Decoding is done with SatDump.

Satellite Tracking

Fig.2 Meteor M2-3 Pass April23rd_2026 from N2YO.com

Figure 2 shows a good pass of Meteor M2-3 close to Toronto on April 23rd_2026.

Signal Decoding

Fig.3 Rx Spectrum SNR>10+dB Fs=1.024Msps

Figure 3 shows the strong receive signal with SNR>10+dB. Figure 4 shows the SatDump decode showing all of Eastern Canada and Figure 5 shows the same with a map overlay.