It's overcast. On the way up the drive I bump into Ross mowing. Just the edges, the long grass and wild plants are left to grow, turning to seed. Leaves on trees looking just a little past their best. He says it's early, this turn to the autumnal.

Up on the tower I can see him and another person down below working near the greenhouse. In the other direction there’s just a thin line of sunlight bouncing off the horizon out at sea. The wind is lightly rippling the puddles in the tarp on the roof. I haven't been up here for a while. The antenna has lost its gleam, tarnished after its months exposed to weather.

I check the setup is working by drifting through the radio spectrum. I land on what I find out is radio north Angus. The presenter likes to play music by local musicians only. Montrose born and bred etc. She says we need to shout about Angus more. She says, Angus is probably not well known unless you're in the potato trade. I laugh and re-tune to 137.62 megahertz.

I'm sitting cross legged on the tarp on top of the roof, my laptop is nestled on top of my laptop. The antenna here hasn't been receiving for a month or so - since the AGS stopped working with the WiFi and it proved hard to fix. Instead I've plugged the set up I use manually into the v-dipole. I feel like I'm sitting listening - statically - to the ‘static’ for ages, I'm used to holding and moving around with the antenna. It feels quite solemn. I hear the faint beeps and expect the sound to burst into full rhythm - butt it remains faint amid the noise. It really feels like NOAA-15 is fading out.

After I decide I won't hear any more of the pass I sit up on the tower for a bit with the static ringing in my ears. While I've been sitting still, I've been thinking of all the places I've taken my turnstile antenna to and listened to these satellites. The familiar sound has been a sort of rooting wherever I’ve ended up. A sort of constant. I've listened in fields, beaches, leaning out of windows, at old observatories, in parks and some spots I'm sure I'm forgetting. In the day and in the night. Here, I think again of the telescope down in the store room that is thought to have been used on the tower in the Victorian period. Shifting technologies, shifting time, people, but perhaps something connected. I look up, squinting. The sun bursts through cracks in the cloud, bringing me back into the day.