In October 2015 Av-Comm completed installation works at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology‘s latest weather satellite receiving earth station located at the new Shoal Bay facility in Darwin, N.T.
The project included the installation of three weather satellite receiving antenna systems that provide access to two of China’s Feng Yun-2 series of geostationary satellites, Feng Yun 2E and Feng Yun 2G as well as the Japanese Meteorological Agency’s HimawariCast service broadcast from the recently commissioned Himawari 8 satellite.
Av-Comm’s technicians supplied and installed two Prodelin 3.7m satellite dishes fitted with Quorum L Band Scalar Feedhorn to facilitate the efficient reception of the L Band transmissions provided by Feng Yun 2E and 2G. China’s Feng Yun-2 series of geostationary satellites, which are situated over the equator at longitudes of 86.5°E and 105°E and provide excellent coverage of the Indian Ocean and the western parts of Australia.
This project also included the installation of the second Australian ground station for the Himawari 8 HimawariCast weather satellite service. As with our previous HimawariCast installations our technicians installed a Prodelin 2.4m C Band satellite dish with Av-Comm C Band Bandpass Filtered 5 kHz PLL LNBs. The satellite dish was aligned to JCSAT 2A and receives a DVB-S2 broadcast of data that is captured and processes using KenCast Fazzt digital video processing server.
The HimawariCast service provided via the Himawari 8 weather satellite provides greatly improved data acquisition capabilities over previous weather satellite, reducing prediction intervals from 30 minutes to 10 minutes. The increase in the frequency of data sets allows for more accurate prediction of weather events and areas that will be impacted by their effects.
Av-Comm would like to thank the Australian Bureau of Meteorology for the opportunity to work with them on this exciting project and looks forward to serving the Bureau with their future satellite reception requirements.
See images from the Himawari 8 HimawariCast on the BOM’s Satellite Viewer here.
