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Table of Contents
DWD (Deutscher Wetterdienst) Weather Fax - 24th Feb 2022
The following images are a collection of images decoded from the DWD station DDK3 Hamburg (7880 kHz centre frequency) on the 24th February 2022. Below this are some notes on software/hardware used for this decoding. Images have been rotated if required before uploading.
Captures by Mark 2M0IIG, QTH Edinburgh
The schedule for the DWD fax service can be found here: https://www.dwd.de/EN/specialusers/shipping/broadcast_en/broadcast_fax_112016.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=1
Decoded Charts
Transmission Schedules
Surface Pressure Charts
36HR Forecast Surface Pressure, from 00:00 UTC
48HR Forecast Surface Pressure, from 00:00 UTC
60HR Forecast Surface Pressure, from 00:00 UTC
84HR Forecast Surface Pressure, from 00:00 UTC
108HR Forecast Surface Pressure, from 00:00 UTC
36HR, 48HR 850 hPa H+T, 700 hPa Relative Humidity, from 00:00 UTC
60HR, 72HR 500 hPa H+T, Surface Pressure, from 00:00 UTC
60HR, 72HR 850 hPa H+T, 700 hPa Relative Humidity, from 00:00 UTC
Surface Analysis North Atlantic, from 06:00 UTC
Ice Conditions Charts
Northwest Atlantic (Canadian Ice Service), from 0000 UTC
Baltic Sea, from 0900 UTC
European Arctic Sea, from 0900 UTC
Wave Prediction Charts
Hardware/Software Setup
Hardware
Radio used was an SDRplay RSP1A (around £99 in the UK). The antenna was a QRPGuys 9:1 UnUntenna with around 10 metres of wire attached and a counterpoise (usually used for transmitting). The antenna wire is trapped by a window, and then goes to a pole outside, height is 4 metres. This is fed with around 5 metres of RG58 coax, and there are clip-on ferrites (cheap ones from Amazon, by no means an ideal setup) used to choke off the common mode current - again, this is more important when transmitting with it, really.
The SDR is connected to a standard Windows 10 laptop (HP Pavillion).
Software
I am using SDR++ to drive the RSP1A. The audio output is routed through Voicemeeter, a virtual audio cable application. FLDigi is used for decoding the signal after it exits the virtual audio cable.
I have adjusted the settings for the Wefax decoder in FLDigi to make sure that it auto-starts, has automatic frequency control turned on, and I have adjusted the shift to make sure it matches the expected +/- 425 Hz for the black/white tones.
Also note that when tuning in USB mode you should tune 1.9 kHz lower than the specified frequency to obtain the entire signal in the passband. For DDK3 this means a frequency in SDR++ of 7878.1 kHz.