Meteor M2-4 Issue: RS Block '3' consistently orange and missing analog telemetry (Last few days)

Weather satellites

Hi everyone,

Over the past few days, I've been noticing a persistent issue with Meteor M2-4 passes, and I wanted to check if anyone else is experiencing the same thing.

I have a great V-Dipole setup, getting rock-solid signals around 17.5 dB SNR with 4 perfectly locked QPSK constellations. However, despite the excellent signal quality, the Reed-Solomon (RS) block '3' is constantly showing up as orange (uncorrectable/garbage data) in SatDump.

Because of this specific data drop, the analog telemetry is failing to load completely. In the SatDump logs, I can see the digital telemetry (like channel1_mode, protective_cover: closed, etc.) perfectly fine, but the analog telemetry is nowhere to be found.

As a direct result of the missing calibration data, the channels (especially CH4) remain uncalibrated (showing only 'Count' instead of temperature/radiance), and SatDump naturally hides almost all of the advanced RGB composite options (like the various 3.75µm IR enhancements).

Is this a known, ongoing issue with M2-4's downlink/OQPSK transmitter right now, or is it just a weird anomaly? Has anyone else noticed this drop in analog telemetry recently?

This problem only m2-4. Statline M2-3 normal.

Any insights would be appreciated! Thanks.

Posted Feb 26, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

11
Loading comments…