# Satellite DXpeditions?



## kenglish (Oct 2, 2004)

A lot of people have heard of the DXpeditions that Hams go on, where they go to some rarely heard, remote place and talk to people via ham radio.
And, AM Band and shortwave listeners sometimes go to quiet, out of the way places along the east and west coasts and set up huge antennas to see what they can pull in from overseas.

Has anyone ever though about taking some FTA receivers, maybe with DVR capabilities, to Europe, Asia, or Africa and seeing how much stuff they can receive (and record for playback to impress their friends)?

Some day, I think that would be fun to do.....maybe carry a couple of receivers, some good LNBs, and a piece of test gear or two.....have a high-quality dish waiting (from a local satellite shop, there), and just sit on a beach some place and do some "sat-sleuthing". Might make IAm-5 sound like I was "just starting".

Now....If I could just write it off my taxes  .


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

While this wasn't FTA digital, many years ago I installed a c/ku 10' dish for a customer. The install was done in the middle of a cold Minnesota winter. The customer was from Germany and was interested in what ever German channels I could set them up with (along with the normal fare of subscription programming). I got them set up, trained them on the system operation and left them on their own. In the process of playing with the system they ran the arm off the limits on the east side. They then went out and tried to fix it but just made things worse. They called me and when I arrived to fix it I found the edge of the dish sitting on a snowdrift pointing almost due east. Of course, the dish was still on the arc because in their "fixing" they never rotated the dish mount. The first thing I did was go into the house and make sure they hadn't messed up the receiver. I turned on the Toshiba 2200 receiver and just for for the fun of it stepped through the channels. What do I find but a bunch of live feeds from the Winter Olympics in Yugoslavia. This was off of a satellite that was under 10 degrees above the horizon from Minnesota and one that I had never seen before, and certainly not meant to be received that far west. I never did find out what satellite it was, but the customer had me show them how to set the dish up properly and then had me leave it on the snow drift so they could watch the olympics for the day.


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## kenglish (Oct 2, 2004)

When we first fed LDS (Church) General Conference to Europe, we used our old Dalsat Ku uplink truck to feed PAS-1 at 45-west. That's about 8-9 degrees elevation, and 105 azimuth from Salt Lake. Fortunately, there is a canyon (and it's associated "notch" in the Wasatch Mountains), right at that angle from our building. We just had to drive around the parking lot until we found the "sweet spot".

Our competitor, US Satellite Corporation used to do a "turn-around" from a Russian satellite, and had to build the dish on a hill, with the dish elevation at about 2 or 3 degrees.

Funny....just before the Athens Olympics, I scoped out the arc from a park (historic farm) near my apartment. From one spot, I was able to see from about 42 degrees west to beyond 180. Both ends were nearly east-west. Unfortunately, I didn't have a portable dish at the time, and an extension cord would have been about 500-1000 feet long.....trees were in the way when any closer to the building and parking areas.

If anyone is interested in what DXpeditions are about, check this one, and the associated page, which links to a great PowerPoint demo:
http://www.dxing.info/dxpeditions/grayland_2004_08.dx

Then, imagine a room full of receivers, a beach-front of dishes, and maybe a big picnic table just outside the door .


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

> we used our old Dalsat Ku uplink truck


I used to do downlink rentals (satellite, sound and video projection) in Minneapolis and surrounds. I had a 10' mesh c/ku dish on a dual axle trailer. The trailer was pretty much a 4-6" angle iron frame with a solid bottom that had been filled with cement for stability. It had a three leg mount and pole mounted in the cement. I had a crank on the two rear corners and the tongue that I used to level the trailer for reception. I used to haul this thing behind my 1988 Chrysler Conquest (a sports car) and always got strange looks from people as I drove down the interstate with the contraption. I could normally have the arc tracked in about five minutes after arriving at the reception site, a necessity in winters. :lol:


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