2025-01-14 11:37:00
Automatic Ground Station 15 Florida
Gainesville, Florida , United States
United States
NOAA-18
2025-01-12 07:44:00
Automatic Ground Station 15 Florida
Gainesville, Florida , United States
United States
NOAA-15
2025-01-11 10:08:00
Automatic Ground Station 15 Florida
Gainesville, Florida , United States
United States
NOAA-19
2025-01-10 10:21:00
Automatic Ground Station 15 Florida
Gainesville, Florida , United States
United States
NOAA-19
2025-01-09 10:33:00
Automatic Ground Station 15 Florida
Gainesville, Florida , United States
United States
NOAA-19
2025-01-08 07:48:00
Automatic Ground Station 15 Florida
Gainesville, Florida , United States
United States
NOAA-15
2025-01-07 11:25:00
Automatic Ground Station 15 Florida
Gainesville, Florida , United States
United States
NOAA-18
2025-01-06 11:39:00
Automatic Ground Station 15 Florida
Gainesville, Florida , United States
United States
NOAA-18
2025-01-05 11:52:00
Automatic Ground Station 15 Florida
Gainesville, Florida , United States
United States
NOAA-18
Another cool, crisp day. Turkey vultures soar on invisible updrafts in the sky. The dry grass is filled with tiny capped nuts, acorn-like but smaller. Surprisingly, dogs search them out and crunch their shells- an unlikely snack. Spanish moss hangs serenely from oak branches, sometimes reaching the ground.
2025-01-04 09:56:00
Automatic Ground Station 15 Florida
Gainesville, Florida , United States
United States
NOAA-19
The ‘Cheshire Cat’ moon hung ponderously over the old golf course at West End in Newberry. The sky was a spectrum starting at the palest yellow to blue and violet. In the tract housing that surrounds a good part of the field, I noticed paper taped to windows with the writing facing out, like a label of completeness, while in other windows Christmas tree lights shone out. On this last of many walks in this park, I felt an eerie sense of quiet.
2025-01-03 10:07:00
Automatic Ground Station 15 Florida
Gainesville, Florida , United States
United States
NOAA-19
Hurricane Idalia has haunted several conversations with locals on the west coast of Florida. In Crystal River, a sleepy seaside town known for its warm springs and manatees, the severity of Idalia was attributed to “a trifecta: king tide, full moon, west wind”. This phrase stayed with me as the New Year passed and the holidays drew to a close. Before spending time in Florida, I had little knowledge of the diversity of hurricanes and which local conditions affected their impact. Hurricane Helene apparently was a “muddy one” as it dragged up tons of mud into houses, streets and dry surfaces, and so repair was even more laborious. I heard the same person from Crystal River say that “because hurricanes tend to hit at night, you never know what’s around you”. They were pointing to Christmas Island, a small patch of land in the middle of the mouth of the river that had been the site of a single house before Idalia- after the storm hit, locals could only make out the Christmas lights strung up around the darkened house, hence its name. It was bought and rebuilt in 2024, right before Helene hit, and now stands crumbling and empty. We also passed a line up of sail boats in the rivermouth, two of which had sunk during Helene, their sailing masts pointing out of the water crookedly. “They didn’t tie up properly for the hurricane” we learned. Yet dozens of other boats were peacefully anchored adjacent and around the sunken ones. Their owners had stayed on their boats during the storm.
2025-01-02 21:39:00
Automatic Ground Station 15 Florida
Gainesville, Florida , United States
United States
NOAA-19
2025-01-02 10:20:00
Automatic Ground Station 15 Florida
Gainesville, Florida , United States
United States
NOAA-19
Migrating sandhill cranes, common apple snails and wild Spanish horses emerged from the tall grass and reeds of Paynes Prairie on a hike yesterday afternoon. The air was much cooler and crisper than previous days, and the humidity dropped from 90% to 50%. We came across an impression in the mud, the outline and texture of which looked strikingly like the sideways body of a pig. There were even tiny lines that looked like fur, and hoof prints where it got up after rolling around. The Paynes Prairie visitor centre had boasted a large poster of a wild boar with very black fur and gleaming eyes, and the title on top of the image said, in bold letters, 'Alien invaders'. Another section of the educational exhibit had information on the history of the prairie, and featured a wall sized display about Seminole and Potano Indigenous communities. Amidst information on Seminole pottery, hunting tools and agriculture, one sentence acknowledged that: "Seminole populations declined in the 18th and 19th centuries due to war, disease and land dispossession". But which wars? Which diseases? Land dispossession by who? These questions and answers were absent.
2025-01-01 10:33:00
Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann
Gainesville, Florida , United States
United States
NOAA-19
Today marks the official permanent installation of the Gainesville Automatic Satellite Ground Station on the roof! We did one more test of two AGS's (15 and 12) running in parallel and receiving the same satellite shortly after 10:30am from the roof. Both received stunningly clear images, even though the pass was only around 65 degrees at max elevation. One V-dipole was mounted on the permanent installation site, and Steve held the second. The former received an image with less interference, which made sense, given it had nothing around it to possibly affect the antenna's radiation pattern. After drilling a pilot hole through the PVC that holds the antenna to the (now waterproof) wooden mast, we used a wood screw to solidly connect the two. We stretched out the RG8X coaxial cable throughout the backyard to make sure there were no kinks, and screwed one end into the base of the antenna on the roof, using zip ties to hold the cable against the mast. Following one edge of the roof, we bolted the cable down with small cable brackets, and looped it under the garage door overhang, following the edge of the moulding around the door to the floor, where we hooked it under a piece of wood. Steve drilled away some of the wood on the inside part of the garage door corner, where we passed the cable through to the inside, testing the garage door could open and close without causing any friction. We then bracketed the cable to the moulding along the bottom of the garage wall to the corner where there is a work desk and a power plug. We had a good metre and a half of cable left, and gently looped this around twice. After the cable was stretched out and secured, we returned to the roof, where we oriented the V-dipole to 'true north' using a professional compass, which meant we had to apply a 6 degree West declination (based on the difference between magnetic North and true North from our position in Florida). One of us oriented the antenna with the compass while the other screwed the wooden mast tightly into the steel mount with two screws. We also wrapped the UHF connector at the end of the coaxial cable with some vinyl electrical tape to protect it from UV radiation and water damage. Back inside, we cleaned up the wood shavings, glue, and spare screws. As we didn't have any extra 3D print casings for the Florida AGS, we DIY-ed a small cardboard box, and hooked up AGS 15 in its corner. It lit up, and let us know that it was going to collect a NOAA-15 pass shortly before 7pm this evening!