Chennai software engineer forecasts weather with self-made antennas

CHENNAI - Rajesh Kannan, a software engineer from Chennai, has a fascinating hobby of using his self-made antennas to predict weather conditions across the globe.

Kannan is an amateur radio operator, and is involved in making different radio equipments through which he communicates with other amateur radio operators on a non-professional basis.

He has interest in radio technology and also satellite communication. Weather Satellite Broadcast is another area within satellite communication, which drew his interest.

He has set up a couple of antennas on the terrace of his house, which receive signals from the satellite in a digital sound format. He feeds in the data in his computer and converts those signals to a digitised weather map.

“I receive signals from an American radio satellite which orbits around the earth two-three times a day. The radio signals have information about the land, sea, the cloud information and cloud top temperature, the humidity content of the clouds, the movement of the cloud and all those things that are required,” Kannan said.

“We capture the signals, and then I record them into the computer and by using special computer programmes, I decode the information into a digitised weather map,” he added.

The total cost for his hand made set up is close to Rs 5000, and he uses PVC pipes, copper rods, aluminium rods and wires to receive signals from the satellites.

Kannan also claims that his predictions are accurate.(ANI)