Brohav WeatherFax Blog

Always having a major interest in the Weather from the time I was very young - most of which is thanks to my father's influence and of course a natural like of the Physical Sciences.

Brohav WeatherFax was started back in the early 1990's (with help and encouragement from an old friend and HAM operator, 8P6SM, if I recall it correctly), when I began receiving Weather Satellite Imagery direct from WEFAX and progressively then to Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites (POES) passing overhead at low altitude (400-500 miles above the Earth's surface). Back then there were several POES (APT) type satellites transmitting imagery, including Soviet/Russian satellites which made things more intersting with more regular passes. At present there are only about three (3) US/NOAA APT satellites in operation.

About a year after that, I upgraded the system and started getting direct imagery from the Geostationary Environmental Orbiting Satellites (GOES) or rather back then the GOES-East satellite was out of commission and the USA (NOAA/NASA) did not have a backup satellite at that time and had to borrow Meteosat 3 from the European consortium to cover the Tropical Atlantic, Caribbean and Eastern USA. This original equipment served well throughout the rest of the 1990's and into the early 2000's but this was an analog system and the world was moving toward digital, so the LRIT (Low Rate Information Transmission)
was conceived and rolled out a couple years ago. This meant that my old GOES WEFAX equipment was obsolete and still wanting to be able receive Direct Imagery from the satellites, regardless of the 'internet' status, I have to re-invest in new equipment.

This was very costly as it was new technology and the European Satellite that was supposed to start the LRIT upgrade path failed shortly after testing, and therefore the Europeans (to their credit) shifted the transmission of satellite imagery to commercial (TV, etc.) satellites and therefore LRIT in the UK, Europe, Africa and parts of the Middle East became defunct, so when the US rolled out their LRIT the market had shrunk considerably and therefore the prices remained high. Yet I made the plunge in 2006 as I did not want to rely solely on the Internet for satellite imagery which still grinds to a halt at time of high alertness.

I also added a Lightning Detector back in 1995/6 and a Weather Station which I have been able to put such data of my web site http://www.brohavwx.com/ which I've maintain for several years now.