
Authors note: This is a rewrite of the original blog post I wrote in 2020, and there have been a lot of changes since then. And I have had A LOT of conversations on forums, emails, and groups about satellite reception. I have given talks and presentations to Universities, NOAA, HAM Radio Clubs, Meteorological groups, Schools and more, and through it all I try to have a sense of humor, I hope you enjoy this for what it is, a bit of humor and parody, looking back on ourselves. Please leave a comment at the bottom, I’d love to hear your experiences and feedback
What the Neighbors Will Definitely Think (Because They Have Nothing Better To Do)
The neighbors are gonna think you lost your marbles. Like, full-blown cut-the-tines-off-his-fork level meltdown. We’re talking about conspiracy theories wilder than a flat Earther trying to explain gravity with a bouncy ball. Because to their pea-sized brains fueled by daytime TV and Instagram Reels, you’ve become a real-life cocktail of MacGyver, Carl Sagan, and Scotty – all rolled into one roof-dwelling, dish-pointing enigma.
Picture this: you’re on the roof again, wrestling with this contraption that looks like a mutant disco ball mated with a blender and bent into a Mobius loop. Rain or shine, you’re out there tinkering, muttering, connecting cables, and swearing to yourself, then vanishing indoors like a satellite-obsessed caveman. The neighbors are convinced you’re building a doomsday device, or maybe a machine to contact your alien overlords.
Think about it. Those multi-billion dollar space agencies, with their teams of rocket scientists and buildings the size of aircraft carriers, launched all those fancy satellites just for you to eavesdrop on with your slightly-less-than-threatening satellite dish cobbled together from spare parts and a discount bin raid. It’s like using a soup can and a string to listen in on a government conference call. Absurd, right? But here you are, the ultimate cosmic eavesdropper, about to unlock the secrets of the universe with a screwdriver, a Raspberry Pi, and a reel of coax that just happened to “fall off” a cable truck.
Now, here’s the fun part: translating that spacey gibberish your contraption picks up. Those fancy agencies probably have software that costs more than your government’s tax accounting software. But not you, oh no.
You, my friend, are a champion of the free world, a knight of the open-source realm! Forget fancy degrees and corporate labs – you’re wielding the power of collective ingenuity, the digital Excalibur forged in the fires of online forums and shared Github code repositories. While others cower behind paywalls and proprietary software, you’re out there jousting with windmills of data restriction, a shining example of the “we can do it ourselves” spirit! Sure, your armor might be duct tape and your steed a rusty leftover tv dish, but hey, that just adds to the legend. After all, who needs a million-dollar satellite dish when you’ve got a can-do attitude and a free software community cheering you on?
The software you need is probably called something incredibly unhelpful, like “Universal Transmogrified Satellite Signal Translator and Interpreter v2.2.10002A7 Beta (Unstable)” (Because apparently, stability is as rare in the open-source universe as a successful first date set up by your mom).
You’ve downloaded programs with names so baffling and complex it sounds like a dragon suffering from turrets syndrome – “GNURadio?, Satdump (Really? Imagine if Gates or Jobs used the name Dump in his software!). Goestools, Wxtoimg, Sanchez, Gpredict, Scytale, Goes_Vitality, Orbitron (I think I played that game at the arcade in high school)”
Sure, the user interfaces might look like it was designed by a Monochromatic Menace: hell-bent against terminology like “User-Friendly” or, “Intuitive“. And the tutorials on the web written by so many kooks, of which I count myself as one, if they are available, are written in a language only spoken by rogue AIs or folks with no concept of teaching principles. The documentation? If it even exists, is written in a language that makes Klingon look like baby talk. But hey, it’s free!
And you have to hand it to these cyber creators in their best Kernel Cornucopia persona. Doing their absolute best, which is truly amazing, and offering it to the ethers. But, there is always a “Commit Crusader” you know, that guy who always pushes a new commit just minutes after you figured out how the 4-hour old code worked…! Besides, a little challenge never hurt anyone, right? You spend hours deciphering cryptic forum posts and watching YouTube tutorials filmed in someone’s basement lit by a single Christmas light, using a camera that even ILM’s steady-cam couldn’t stabilize. But eventually, with the perseverance of a champion thumb wrestler and the attention span of a border collie on Red Bull, you crack the code and get it to work. The universe’s secrets are finally within your grasp, all thanks to the collective genius of the free software community and your unwavering determination (and maybe a few strategically placed caffeine pills and/or alcoholic beverages).

Sure, you might attract some unwanted attention. Black vans circling the block? Clicks on your phone line that sound suspiciously like Morse code for “cease and desist”? Totally normal stuff…..Probably.
Maybe it’s just the neighborhood-bored teenagers with a new game of “Spy the Crazy Satellite Guy.” Or maybe it’s the guys in black sunglasses who keep asking about your “research project” and leave pamphlets for “voluntary government relocation programs.” Don’t worry about it! Just keep a smile on your face, offer them a cup of lukewarm coffee (because everyone knows real spies hate lukewarm coffee), and casually mention that you are right in the middle of a chat discussion on demods and lua composites with guys in Russia and Europe ” That should clear things right up.
But hey, at least you’ll have bragging rights! You, a lone wolf with a can-do attitude, did what those giant government labs with their planet-sized dishes couldn’t. All on a budget that wouldn’t even faze a college student with a ramen noodle addiction. Speaking of food, when somebody mentions “deep_dish”, you think about parabola’s not pizza!
(Although, a slightly bigger dish and a professional tracking system wouldn’t hurt. And maybe some industrial-strength cables because let’s be real, your current setup is held together by a smattering of disappointment, a dash hope and a prayer. That reminds me, I might need trenching for power and maybe some CAT5 lines, maybe fiber?, and a new router. Probably going to need more storage too….
That reminds me, I’ll have to jump on Matrix and see what that guy is doing with his 3D print job of that new triple helix backfire quad probe reverse linear feed with the cantenna made from a Quaker Steak and Lube French Fry bucket.

If you made it this far, thanks, share the post and leave me a comment below!
Carl, You nailed it! I work for a TV station in Seattle, and I just shared this with our IT guy, and he not only laughed but also agreed with your comments!
The open Source software is a blessing and a curse, but sites like yours make it so that everyone at least has a chance to try out this hobby. Now, How about a funny article on those who make the hardware!
Thanks for the comment, glad my site could help you out, and yes I will consider a satire post on the hardware side!
Ok, I write code, and I post to Github, NuLab and Codium. And I must say this blog post is really a piece of great shit, though absolutely spot on. You have created, what I feel is a true telling of the wierdo in us all. Having called your blog post a piece of shit, I want you to know, it is with love! I laughed at the “stability is as rare in the open-source universe as a successful first date set up by your mom” OMG I am stealing that! Have you read issue and pull requests? Holy Mother of God! People ask for everything, I write code for GIS stuff, and I get requests for the strangest things. Could I get your permission to post this on codingblocks.com ? You need to write one of these just for us coders, and mention the craving of some coder to use an API -in everypiece of software, I mean come on! Keep up the good fight my man, and as always, watch your frontend, and your backend!
There’s a bit of strange in all of us in the words of the late great Jimmy Buffett..
“Fruitcakes in the kitchen, fruitcakes on the street
Struttin’ naked through the crosswalk in the middle of the week
Half-baked cookies in the oven, half-baked people on the bus
There’s a little bit of fruitcake left in everyone of us”
What an amazing perspective on the hobby! And so satirical and funny! We have all had those looks, especially from our spouses!
One of my wife’s comments i
“was that dish there last week? I don’t remember that one”
Ok, I am still laughing! You are so right, I have about 15 repositories on GITHUB, of my own, and when looking at other open source stuff, it basically boils down to, “Here, I made something cool, now go figure out how to use it!” I am guilty of it too, and your comments on Matrix, spot on and funny, I am on the satdump matrix, and it’s like they don’t even speak any earthly language, and when you ask for help you get two or three sentences, then you get pointed to a page of documentation that is 2 years old and doesn’t include any of the changes since then.
But I am grateful to the authors that take the time to write it! The software available is amazing I am glad you don’t just pick one piece of software and write it up, there is some good stuff out there!. Keep up the great work Carl, your site has more information than NOAA! It is my goto site!
Thank you for the comment, honestly, we wouldn’t be doing any of this without folks sharing their interest, time, and ingenuity with coding, tweaking, and more importantly, sharing! As said on the satdump pages, it is a WIP -Work in Progress, and these folks have other things in life to do as well, it’ll all catch up. I guess the excitement to push something new can overtake the more boring stuff like documentation, but it is there, and it is being updated as time permits.
Thanks for all the help you have given me. I read this today after seeing it on X, and man you know your stuff. Reading some of this so-called documentation is nearly impossible. “Ok, now you just need to set it so that the LO is a zero, and your format is ziq2 but never use AGC…blah blah blah…. And, why the hell is it called Recorder, when it is really Live Processing….unless you scroll all the way down to recording… And Projections have no explanation…. And clearly they don’t appreciate your contributions, as your name isn’t on the About page, and I have seen them reference your stuff and use your files! Anyway, enough of my pointless ranting. Thanks for the help, you got satdump to work on my PC! From 800 miles away finally.
Now where can I download the Universal Transmogrified Satellite Signal Translator and Interpreter v2.2.10002A7 Beta (Unstable) software, it looks a bit easier LOL. PS I donated on KOFI to you and would encourage everyone else to do the same! https://ko-fi.com/usradioguy
Hi Brendan, a bit harsh, but I understand your sentiment. Remember we all started somewhere. When I started I built a simple V Dipole, then a QFH, and when you throw in terms like LNA, QFH, Feed, AGC etc. I didn’t know what they meant, and it took time to learn all the lingo. These folks know it like the back of their hands, so when they throw out terms like ZIQ2 or AGC, do yourself a favor and look up what they mean, it’ll help you later! And thanks for the donation! if everyone would give a dollar that read this post I could run my site for a year!
We briefly met I believe at a conference some time ago. I work for one of the “Multi Billion dollar space agencies”. You know, the one with an E, an S, and a A in the name followed by ECSAT?
I’m a big admirer of your work, and I follow you closely on TwitterX, and Facebook and your site. At work we’ve been impressed by your incredible talent for post-processing satellite imagery. Honestly, when we compare your images to the ones we get from NOAA or our own EUMETSAT, yours are simply stunning!
While security protocols prevent us from using open-source software at work, I tinker with it on my home computer. I even built your antenna design for capturing NOAA satellite signals! My wife used to think I was a bit obsessed… until I showed her the amazing images I could produce. For my birthday last year, she surprised me with a canvas print of one of your Earth images – the one with your logo at the top, which is a cherished part of my office decor here in the UK.
Thank you for being one of the unsung heroes who makes the world a more beautiful and interesting place. We in the professional world, salute you! Keep up the good work, and since this article was funny, in the words of John Cleese
“He who laughs most, learns best”
Hello Mark, I don’t think we met in person, but I think it was over a Zoom conference call if I recall. Funny you mention the canvas print, I had a couple in Brazil that wanted a nice image of S America to frame, they said they’d pay me for it, but, it’s not really mine to sell, so I sent them a relatively cloud-free image , and they did the same thing, had it printed and it’s in their home!
thanks for the compliments!
Great, but have you had the police called on you? I live north of the Regina Airport in Saskatchwan CA, and I had set up a nooelec dish to try and get GOES-18. As you know, this involves a lot of adjusting and running to and fro to check signal, viterbi, the whole schmeel. I decide to bring out a old monitoring the deck so I could view the goestools reading easier while I moved the dish around. While I am doing this my wife come to the back door with a constable! He said he got a report from a neighbor that I was stealing Dish satellite programming! I showed him my little PI and my signal stuff, we laughed about it, turns out he was a signal technician when he was in the CA army! He just blew off the whole thing and told me not to worry about the ‘Karens’ on the street. I know who it was that reported me. I think I’ll get my own black van and cover it with antenna and park it in front of her house!!
That’s a good one, no, never had the cops called on me! I am a former Chief of Police and career Law enforcement officer that need a hobby and this is it! I shared your story on X to see if anyone else had a similar story https://twitter.com/carlreinemann/status/1803392880397996131
G’day, I just came in from setting up yet another antenna to try and get some ISS transmissions as it passes over Adelaide. And strewth, my neighbors were watching me from the window the whole time, I think the wife even took a picture! Saw this shared on X by a friend, and it made me chuckle. I might even print it out on paper and tape it to my neighbors door!
Thanks mate, for turning on the comments in this post!
Thanks for the comment, I have seen your imagery on Facebook, My neighbors now ignore me when I am up on the roof, or a ladder, or standing in the snow….. adjusting and tweaking an antenna.
I had to google the term strewth -“used to express surprise or disappointment”
Carl
Well, while this is a funny poke at us the satellite receivers, I think it really shows the level of detail of what is involved in this hobby! I am one of those who charge for my software. The users of my software can use it free of charge for 30 days, and they can choose as to whether or not they want to continue to use it. My software is different from what is shown here, and really has nothing to do with satellites, more about sound design. But there are another 20 opensource software pieces that compete for my brand, and they are all pretty good, but the support is lacking, as some of them are created by a group of developers, and no one single person is responsible for ‘support’ and as such things fall through the cracks. I guess the bottom line is, you get what you pay for. Forums help, but quickly devolve into a hierarchy in which the developers talk amongst themselves and frequently ignore the end user. The end users then are forced to guess, peek at code, and look for help anywhere they can get it.
Perfectly composed subject matter, Really enjoyed reading through