I am a dealer in FTA (Free To Air) satellite systems and would be glad to
answer any questions about the satellite hobby either here or by e-mail.
In short, here are most of the satellites viewable from most of North
America. http://www.lyngsat.com/america.shtml When you get there, click
on any satellite for a list of what is on it. For example, click on
"Intelsat Americas 5" to bring up a list of what is on it. Up until a few
days ago, this was Telstar 5, but Intelsat bought part of their fleet.

Notice that some of the MHz frequencies have 4 digits, while the ones in the
lower part of the list have 5. The 4 digit ones are C-band, the 5 digit
ones are Ku. C-band generally requires a 7.5 foot dish, with 10 feet being
optimum. Ku generally requires a 39" dish, but for a true hobbyist you can
get most things with a 30" one. A large C-band dish can get both C and Ku
with the proper feed assembly. Ku feeds are cheap, $10-$20 can get you a
good one.

In the list, anything that is in light yellow, white or gray is free. A
key to the color code is at the bottom of the page.

Less than $200 will get you a turn key Ku digital FTA system consisting of a
30" dish, LNBF, blind search receiver and cable. For C-band, the best bet
is to find abandoned dishes in your own location. All receivers are both C
and Ku, it is the dish size and feedhorn assembly that determines which is
received. Blind search means the receiver is smart enough to find the
signals without your having to know the frequencies and symbol rates listed
in the chart. You do not have to go through the tedious process of
entering them into the receiver, the receiver finds them and stores them
into channel memories (typical capacity ~3000 channels) entirely on it's
own. You can of course manually enter them if you want to.

Lee Richardson, owner
Mech-Tech
Evansville, Indiana





Could someone direct me to some information on how to recieve these C and
KU
band signals. ie: harware and frequency info. (satellite for dummies)

thanks
Norm
Yar NS Can