A $5 salvaged RV satellite dome is the core of a functional DIY weather radar. Builder Koakno repurposed a Winegard Carryout Anser GM-5000, a motorized parabolic dish originally designed for TV satellite tracking, into a scanning X-band radar antenna. A cheap SDR injects an 850 MHz signal, which the dome's low-noise block up-converts to 10.4 GHz and transmits toward the sky.
Return echoes from rain, hail, and debris are down-converted back to 850 MHz by the LNB and captured by the SDR, then plotted on a Plan Position Indicator display. Koakno reports detection ranges of 40 km for heavy rain and up to 60 km for a supercell hail core. The full build documentation lives on GitHub. The signal chain and antenna repurposing methodology are worth reading in detail, not just the range figures.
This system currently violates FCC regulations and equivalent rules in most countries. Operating it requires proper spectrum licenses. Koakno is explicit about this. It functions as a technical study of weather radar architecture, not a ready-to-deploy tool. That legal constraint is also what makes the engineering choices here more interesting: the whole thing is built around hardware that was never intended for this purpose.
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