Antenna Manufacturing at VHF Frequencies Applied to Weather-Satellite Data Reception [Education Column]

The aim of this paper is the description of experience in teaching a university extension course for manufacturing homemade antennas and receiving weather-satellite images with them. We thus introduce students to the field of antennas with a very entertaining application example that they can easily reproduce by themselves. The different topics covered by the course are described, with a special emphasis on the description of the antennas and how they are manufactured, which are the core topics of the course. Antenna reflection parameters and received weather images are shown to illustrate the good results achieved by the students.