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Thread: Pre-Web Satellite Resources

  1. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by jbeatty View Post
    There was a Gorizont at that approximate position near where the current Express AM3 is located. It was full of Eastern Soviet state programs and dominated the low western sky (from my location) with booming wideband signals that could be received 2 degrees on either side of it.

    The Gorizonts had poor station keeping and wobbled quite a bit which didn't matter anyway!
    The satellite was in a 6° inclined orbit drifting in a figure 8. There was just one TP (Channel) at 3675 Right Hand Circular Broadcasting in Secam. They were using energy dispersal. A low-frequency waveform combined with the baseband signal prior to modulation, to spread the FM signal's peak power across the available transponder bandwidth in order to reduce the potential for creating interference to ground-based communications services.



    on a normal analogue receiver the picture appeared pulsating.

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  • #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by AdrianR View Post
    Hi Guys,


    I know of the World Satellite Almanac Books and so on, what else did people use for updates on transponders, etc.?
    .

    I purchased one of those things in the early Days. The days before the Internet were a gem. I had to wait until a mailing what was going in on our Region Via Gary ???? Forget his name from Av Comm in Noth Sydney

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    Wasnt that Gary Cratt?
    Didnt he write for both EA and Silicon chip back then, much of which I barely understood.
    I stand unequivicably behind everything I say , I just dont ever remember saying it !!

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  • #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by jbeatty View Post
    I can only speak for myself here but I remember I bought a huge C band dish (4.2 meters) from Wally Shand, CEO of Videosat back in the late 80's


    I've still got that old BMAC stored somewhere
    Arghhh Wally Chand. that a Name that I have not heard for a Long time. If I was correctly My mate spotted A guy using a Binoculars (Thanks for my Daughter spelling this) spy on us doing a 7.2M Dish install in North West Sydney and it was Wally.
    Funny thing the Guys we met that wanted a 6M + Dish Just to watch ESPN was incredible. That How I met Mick Boulas and that how it become Involved in Pay TV.

    Yes I still have a PAL and NTSC modded BMac

    (15 Min to type this post)

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  • #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by gordon_s1942 View Post
    Wasnt that Gary Cratt?
    Didnt he write for both EA and Silicon chip back then, much of which I barely understood.
    Arghhhh thats the Name. Gary Cratt. He Charges like on BULL on FIRE.

    $900 for a simple LNB, VideoPlex Decoder for viewing Channel Feed Nine $1000. Yes this Box has about $20 worth of parts from the Dick Smith Days.

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    The satellite was in a 6° inclined orbit drifting in a figure 8. There was just one TP (Channel) at 3675 Right Hand Circular Broadcasting in Secam. They were using energy dispersal. A low-frequency waveform combined with the baseband signal prior to modulation, to spread the FM signal's peak power across the available transponder bandwidth in order to reduce the potential for creating interference to ground-based communications services.
    Good to know B52. I didn't manage to get the dish low enough to see this sat until the mid 90's (nearly a decade later than your pic) By then internet information was available, encryption was becoming widespread and the early days of only having a handful of sats to look at had well and truly passed. Good fun though!
    Last edited by jbeatty; 05-12-16 at 09:19 PM. Reason: addition
    4.6m C band dish, numerous Strong boxes, GTsat V8 Nova and even an old BMAC somewhere ---

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    Default Wally

    Arghhh Wally Chand. that a Name that I have not heard for a Long time. If I was correctly My mate spotted A guy using a Binoculars (Thanks for my Daughter spelling this) spy on us doing a 7.2M Dish install in North West Sydney and it was Wally.
    Funny thing the Guys we met that wanted a 6M + Dish Just to watch ESPN was incredible. That How I met Mick Boulas and that how it become Involved in Pay TV.

    Yes I still have a PAL and NTSC modded BMac
    Funny story, Mr672A!

    I first met Wally at the Ag Quip field days in the mid 80's. He had a display of sat gear for HACBSS.
    I liked the guy and his wife and yes, he was quite expensive but nobody was very cheap in those early days.

    He was originally charging over $6000 for his basic 6.5m C band system. At that price the system probably sold slowly and by the time I bought mine the price had dropped to $3000. I think the dish may have been sourced from India and was quite well built. The H/H mount had design problems and I re-designed mine entirely.

    The dish has survived the years well. I gave the metal center hub a rebuild recently to remove corrosion and replaced all the galvanised bolts and screws with stainless steel. The 3 foot analogue jacks were replaced with current technology replacements at the same time.

    Cheers!
    4.6m C band dish, numerous Strong boxes, GTsat V8 Nova and even an old BMAC somewhere ---

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    Quote Originally Posted by AdrianR View Post
    Just as an aside, did anyone ever receive those Ekran (Russian) satellites at 99°E that used to broadcast in UHF?
    Wow that's a blast from the past for me, late 70s Indian service, they were on 700mhz and no tried to get them on the west coast but no luck. But did read reports in television magazine in the late 70s of reception reports. But can not remember where.

    My first introduction to C Band Sat tv for me was at the Perth Electronics show in the early 80s when they had a Square 18ft Hills satellite dish on display inside the pavilion, looked like they made the mesh our of chicken wire, but it was getting ABC Sydney feed, I was hooked.

    I saw and then played with the first Ausat 1 and 3 BMAC services. Enabling GWN/imparja which were all done indervidually, no central database then.

    EPAL gear was asking premium prices when I got mine. Considering it was such simple technology.

    I only threw out heaps of newsletters from the late 80s recently, was a great read.

    Avcom had a BBS running in the early 90s that had heaps of sat info on it, I used to access that from work.

    We used to get Multichoice of Pas4 and then pas7 which was stronger. Cards were purchased from a dealer in South Africa from memory, was a thrieving industry over here.

    If you were lucky you could get a cloned ESPN BMAC receiver from Europe to open up the ch on Pas4. But they were rare.

    First digital services from memory were the Asiasat 2 Eurobouquet and some services on Pas2. Both receivable with the pace 500 or early version pace 400 before Galaxy nobbled them.

    Gorizon Satellite at 96e were that strong you could probebly pick them up on a rubbish bin lid, but they inclined terribly, so you only had about 6-8 hours of viewing time as it swung through its figure 8 pattern.

    I got my first .8mt petal solid and then 3.7mt mesh from Winsat in Sydney, Jacob Keenes rings a bell, but I might have the name slightly wrong. That was around 87/88. GRry crTt sold me a SA BMAC decoder which was close to $2k then and later scored a couple of SA 9224 powerVu boxes for GWN on Pas2.

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  • #29
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    I got first involved in Satellite Hobby back in 1983 or 1982 when I go to the US to watch Nascar and I come back home with a 3M dish. I set it up and I find Intelsat 180 (between all the Sparkles) It built on and on to the system that we have today. My wife like the Hobby and gets fruits from it so everyone happy.
    Yes The BMac Scientific Atlantic (geee I spelt that OK) that I have have to the replacement eeprom (socket) so when the key change I upgrade the spare eeprom from my mates and drive it home and plug it it and it was good from 2 to 6 weeks

    See TV for nothing was going on in the late 80's and today it the same but HI tech as you have to have all the Gear to do it.

    15 Min to type this post

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  • #30
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    Jesus.

    Some old Farts in this forum.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mr 672A View Post
    Jesus.

    Some old Farts in this forum.
    They're coming out of the woodwork now!
    4.6m C band dish, numerous Strong boxes, GTsat V8 Nova and even an old BMAC somewhere ---

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    I don't remember when I joined this site long before its famous crash. I remember Cough, Cough, Cough the Days where you could post private photos of the Satellite setup you have at home without the public viewing because the last house my Photo's was plaster ever where.
    Actually I found a site where a member BOASTED that this was its setup. LIAR! PIG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

    15 Min to type this post

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  • #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by cmoore View Post
    We used to get Multichoice of Pas4 and then pas7 which was stronger. Cards were purchased from a dealer in South Africa from memory, was a thrieving industry over here.
    Yeah, that was the C-band version of our Ku-band one in South Africa basically. They killed it in about 2010 I think. Pity. Yes, it is true that in 2000/2001 PAS 4 and PAS 7 were co-located, but the stronger version of C-band MultiChoice was actually on the PAS 10 satellite, launched in 2001. PAS 7 did have one or two C-band channels, but mostly Ku-band with DStv MultiChoice South Africa on a spotbeam directed over Namibia, SA, Mocambique, Botswana and Zimbabwe. They did PAS 7 to strengthen and widen the signal that used to be put out by PAS 4. People in Namibia used to be on the fringe area of PAS 4 South Africa spotbeam, so needed 1.8m dishes just to pick it up. Today, with Intelsat 20 (and with PAS 7), they only need 90 cm dishes. If you go to Swakopmund today, you will see many houses with two dishes - the small dish, and next to it a big offset or even prime-focus in some cases. Mostly Katherein SatAn (from the Germans, Swakopmund has many Germans) and big Channel Masters.

    Quote Originally Posted by cmoore View Post
    First digital services from memory were the Asiasat 2 Eurobouquet and some services on Pas2. Both receivable with the pace 500 or early version pace 400 before Galaxy nobbled them.
    Ooh yes, I remember reading about those services, and them using a Panasat 520 for the Eurobouquet as well in some cases, as a tester. One had to delete all the South African settings on it first. There was another service I think called Star TV or something on one of the Asiasats that also used the DGT 400, with some encryption or system called NTL 3000 or something or other.
    Last edited by irritant; 07-12-16 at 04:14 PM.

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  • #34
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    Just doing some digging and I found some new Multicoice V 1.6 Cards. Found also Cams V1.10 for the Pace What I think for the DGT 400 series Pace (Was Galaxy) . Actualing I found a few Pace Boxes in my junk section in the garage, found a tip full of them.

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    The Pas 7 multichoice sports chs were excellent, as there were limited ad breaks so you got 7 chs of live sports on the weekend.

    I had a low threshold Palcom receiver that allowed me to pull video from a Gorizon satellite at 53deg E which was right on my elevation limits at the time. I had a 3mt mesh dish mounted at roof height at the time, it was light enough so I did not suffer from it drooping when it got to low elevations, unlike the solid dish.

    Optus A1 and A3 had heaps of analogue feeds, so you were able to watch a weeks worth of programs in a day, such as Neighbours/Simpsons and Sale of a Century. There was also concert feeds etc. as well as the 3 EPAL Chs, so you were never starved of choice.

    Garry Cratt at Avcon was a pioneer of the hobby who got many people into the hobby, with his articles in Silocon Chip and his 1.5mt satellite package he had on offer. I believe ha sold a few 1000 of them at the time.

    I used to get heaps of Sat magazines from the US in the mid 80s that primed up my knowledge of large dish setups. Those were the days when 80k LNBs and LBCs were considered high tech.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mr 672A View Post
    Just doing some digging and I found some new Multicoice V 1.6 Cards. Found also Cams V1.10 for the Pace What I think for the DGT 400 series Pace (Was Galaxy) . Actualing I found a few Pace Boxes in my junk section in the garage, found a tip full of them.

    HE HE at the height of the piracy days the Pace Dgt400 sold for premium prices on EBay. Common to get $300-300 per unit.

    Free Foxtel was not actually free after you worked out how much you paid for a box and card. Though the long term benifits outweighed it.

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    I was quite intrigued by something I read. Is it true that in the 80's or 90's you used to get LNBs that needed a minimum of 18V to operate?

    Of course today you use either 13V or 18V to control V and H polarity, respectively. But, these old LNBs you would have to turn manually to "align" them with the correct polarity, and they used a constant power of 18V.

    Interesting, because when Aurora came around in 1998, the settings were:

    Satellite: Optus B3
    Frequency: 12,407
    Symbol Rate: 30,000
    FEC: 2/3
    Polarization: Vertical

    But, on the decoder, one had to set polarization to "Horizontal" in order to get the LNB to work, because the H setting sends 18V down the cable from the decoder. The V setting only sends 13V.

    I read settings in the original UEC manual for the 642, 645 and 660 decoders, and they had it as:

    12407, 30000, 2/3, Horizontal

    I always thought it was a typo.

    Now, after so many years, I realize it was intentionally given that way.

  • #38
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    Quote Originally Posted by AdrianR View Post
    I was quite intrigued by something I read. Is it true that in the 80's or 90's you used to get LNBs that needed a minimum of 18V to operate?
    .
    YEP, C BAND commercial LNBs are still single pol. I use two on an orthofeed and have a 18/13volt switch conected to change polarity.

    In the early days we used to crank the power up to 24volts to try and extract more gain from them, with a risk that you fried them if you were not careful.

    Now with the modern semiconductors they stay flatline gain from 13-24volts.

    Yes the original Ausat Ku setups were single polarity LNBs that you had to swing around to horz/vert to work on specific transponders.

    Voltage switching LNBFs came out in the mid 90s.

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    Quote Originally Posted by cmoore View Post
    YEP, C BAND commercial LNBs are still single pol. I use two on an orthofeed and have a 18/13volt switch conected to change polarity.

    In the early days we used to crank the power up to 24volts to try and extract more gain from them, with a risk that you fried them if you were not careful.

    Now with the modern semiconductors they stay flatline gain from 13-24volts.

    Yes the original Ausat Ku setups were single polarity LNBs that you had to swing around to horz/vert to work on specific transponders.

    Voltage switching LNBFs came out in the mid 90s.

    Yup not only are the commercial LNB's single polarity but you if you need a microwave filter as well then that's even more fun. Plus a nice mount to put them on.
    The Patriot mount has 2 KU and 2 Cband LNB's on one mount.



    IF EVOLUTION WORKS, WHY SO MANY IDIOTS?

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    I use this setup for 124e & 128e on two separate 3m dishes. Why you ask? Well I could prime on 124 which is the weaker of the 2 and offset on 128.
    But I use this setup for some commercial users who can accept the couple of times a year I might suffer signal loss due to lightning strikes.
    Typhoon rains of 50 - 100mm an hour I can get through.

    NJR Japan also make nice LNB's. Make sure you get ones that suit your satellites as Japanese satellites use different voltage than the rest of the world.

    Same setup on that 1.8m for a client for sports bar. He also had 2 dishes for Sky Perfect Japan.
    He also never really had any issues unless extreme bad weather.



    IF EVOLUTION WORKS, WHY SO MANY IDIOTS?

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