NOAA Conference 2017

A New Era for NOAA Environmental Satellites : 2017 NOAA Satellite Conference : July 17-20 2017, New York. Once again RIG was represented by Dave Cawley for the PIU's (Private Individual Users).
Steve Padar was there to help him.

The conference was held at The City College of New York, a university built in a Gothic style and the first in the USA to admit students who were not wealthy.  The building the conference was held in is here.  Steve and Dave had only just walked into the main room with 450 delegates when the organiser Eric Madsen made a bee-line for Dave and said "Dave, so glad to see you here" !  And this was just the start.

Dave made the point that amateurs had made a significant contribution over the years and that RIG had presented many papers at NOAA Conferences over the years.

Many NOAA people had left since 1986 when RIG first started to work directly with NOAA, and those people were in favour of simple direct reception, but before they left most admitted that the world had moved on.  It was disappointing to see so few old faces.

One major discovery was that new GOES R is  probably receivable by amateurs on a reasonably size dish on 1.7GHz with truly great resolution for many years to come.  However all the Weather Satellite groups have stopped all home construction with the exception of Werkgroep Kunstmanen who have our greatest respect.

The group photo of those who were left at the end of the Conference !  Steve and Dave are 5 rows back from the front on the left.

Part of the massive lecture theatre.  You can read most of the presentations here

Thanks to Henry Neal for making this all possible by starting RIG in 1984 which now in 2017 is 33 years ago !

Will RIG be back at the 2019 NOAA Conference ?  Watch this space !