First system for reception of APT images from NOAA polar orbiting satellites was installed at our site back in 1970. That system has been designed and built by technical stuff of CHMI, with several modifications it served till 1979.
First system for reception of the NOAA/AVHRR digital data (made by MacDonald Dettwiler & Associates, Canada) was installed at our site in January 1979, with one modification it served well till 1995 (17 years !!!). The antena of this system is still on the roof, but not functional.
A system for reception of WEFAX data from the European geostationary satellite METEOSAT was assembled from various parts in 1985, with several modifications it served till 1991. In summer of 1991, a PC-based SDUS station from UKW-Technik Electronics GmbH (Germany) was installed. With several upgrades of the reception chains it was operational till WEFAX termination in June 2006.
As next major step, a system from VCS Nachrichtentechnik GmbH was installed in two steps: Meteosat/PDUS in December 1994, NOAA/HRPT in June 1995. The system served with some minor upgrades and improvements till 2005).
Last investments were an upgrade to system for reception and processing of Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) data, which took place in December 2004, and an upgrade of the reception and processing of NOAA/HRPT in October 2005. For details go below.
Present state.
The present CHMI's satellite system from VCS consists of two major systems:
The system was installed in October 2005. Part of the old frontend subsystem was used and upgraded, the processing subsystem was replaced by a new one.
On the frontend of the NOAA/HRPT subsystem there is a 3.0 m parabolic tracking antenna, mounted on the roof of our building. All the indoor equipment of the frontend system (HRPT tracking control system, receivers, HRPT bit- and frame-synchronizers) is housed in a standard rack.
The recievers are connected via local Ethernet network to the processing computer, running VCS 2met! software. Products are distributed to users via LAN and TCP/IP.
In December 2004 a new MSG system based on the VCS 2met! concept was installed at Praha-Libuš,
for details go here.