I’ve been working on improving performance and portability of my V-dipole for NOAA weather satellite reception.

Previously, I had the antenna mounted to a PVC pipe stuck in the dirt in my backyard at the appropriate 0.44~ish meters.

Today, I tried it in the front street with a new free standing mount. Despite being at the appropriate height, SNR was terrible unless I physically touched the antenna rod connected to the center conductor. Also, there’s already a ferrite choke on the cable close to the antenna.

I’m trying to work out how much could be different between my front road and backyard. Is it possible that the layer of asphalt is not acting like an appropriate ground plane mirror? Should I create a physical ground plane? For the record, grass was wet and asphalt was dry.

I’ve ordered a cheap NanoVNR to investigate, but in the meantime, I thought I’d ask since I only get so many chances to test the antenna.

I've had a sdr sitting in my drawer for a few months now (was going to use it to sniff for weather stations near me to feed to my home assistant)

Didn't end up going in that direction, but I would like to play around with it!

Where are some good places to start, what are your use cases?