"Gary Smith" wrote in
:

Hi, i have a 2.4 metre solid dish here and was going to use it for
TVRO but havn't got round to it as the majority of it is foreign with
subtitles and that doesn't impress me all that much.

Much of it is also available as streaming internet video.
Free video players are widely available. So, why invest
in the TVRO equiptment.

I like the Wi-Fi DX idea for the dish.

On 08/06/2010 10:52 PM, Gordon wrote:
"Gary wrote in
:

Hi, i have a 2.4 metre solid dish here and was going to use it for
TVRO but havn't got round to it as the majority of it is foreign with
subtitles and that doesn't impress me all that much.

Much of it is also available as streaming internet video.
Free video players are widely available. So, why invest
in the TVRO equiptment.

I like the Wi-Fi DX idea for the dish.

I had a 10 foot horizon to horizon Zenith dish and not only did I catch
news anchors picking their noses but got a lot of shows a week before
they were on regular TV. That was 1990 time frame, so much must have
changed by now. I did pick up purely digital signals which were
detectable as byte length dots and dashes (1's and 0's) but never
recorded one. I have to wonder what those were. Now, in 2010 it may be a
bit of an antique but I will bet there is still some interesting stuff
going around.

On Aug 11, 2:02*pm, Bill Baka wrote:
On 08/06/2010 10:52 PM, Gordon wrote:

"Gary *wrote in
:

Hi, i have a 2.4 metre solid dish here and was going to use it for
TVRO but havn't got round to it as the majority of it is foreign with
subtitles and that doesn't impress me all that much.

Much of it is also available as streaming internet video.
Free video players are widely available. *So, why invest
in the TVRO equiptment.

I like the Wi-Fi DX idea for the dish.

I had a 10 foot horizon to horizon Zenith dish and not only did I catch
news anchors picking their noses but got a lot of shows a week before
they were on regular TV. That was 1990 time frame, so much must have
changed by now. I did pick up purely digital signals which were
detectable as byte length dots and dashes (1's and 0's) but never
recorded one. I have to wonder what those were. Now, in 2010 it may be a
bit of an antique but I will bet there is still some interesting stuff
going around.

There's a lot of sports programming available in the clear, both
analog and digital. On a far west C-band satellite (135-degrees West,
I think) I could still get the Alaska network digital feeds until
recently in San Diego. ( I took down my 10-foot C-band dish a few
years ago, so my knowledge is getting stale.)

Much info is available on skyvision.com and satelliteguys.us . Also
see lyngsat.com and sadoun.com . The science of cataloging what's
available is not perfected, as the programmers don't care that we know
what's on -- unless we're paying customers. :-(

The fun is building the gear, especially antennas and mounts. I hand-
built a geometrically-correct polar mount out of the pipe from a
DirecTV wall mount and an ordinary TV antenna rotor. It tracked the
arc perfectly for a small Ku dish. I still have it and I'll post a
picture if anybody wants to see it.

I hope this helps.

"Sal"

I would like to see the picture. If no one else is interested you can
email the picture. My email is in the clear.


On Thu, 12 Aug 2010 20:33:16 -0700 (PDT), "Sal M. Onella"
wrote:


There's a lot of sports programming available in the clear, both
analog and digital. On a far west C-band satellite (135-degrees West,
I think) I could still get the Alaska network digital feeds until
recently in San Diego. ( I took down my 10-foot C-band dish a few
years ago, so my knowledge is getting stale.)

Much info is available on skyvision.com and satelliteguys.us . Also
see lyngsat.com and sadoun.com . The science of cataloging what's
available is not perfected, as the programmers don't care that we know
what's on -- unless we're paying customers. :-(

The fun is building the gear, especially antennas and mounts. I hand-
built a geometrically-correct polar mount out of the pipe from a
DirecTV wall mount and an ordinary TV antenna rotor. It tracked the
arc perfectly for a small Ku dish. I still have it and I'll post a
picture if anybody wants to see it.

I hope this helps.

"Sal"
John Ferrell W8CCW

On Aug 13, 10:27*am, John Ferrell wrote:
I would like to see the picture. If no one else is interested you can
email the picture. My email is in the clear.

On Thu, 12 Aug 2010 20:33:16 -0700 (PDT), "Sal M. Onella"





wrote:
There's a lot of sports programming available in the clear, both
analog and digital. *On a far west C-band satellite (135-degrees West,
I think) I could still get the Alaska network digital feeds until
recently in San Diego. ( I took down my 10-foot C-band dish a few
years ago, so my knowledge is getting stale.)

Much info is available on skyvision.com and satelliteguys.us . *Also
see lyngsat.com and sadoun.com . *The science of cataloging what's
available is not perfected, as the programmers don't care that we know
what's on -- unless we're paying customers. *:-(

The fun is building the gear, especially antennas and mounts. * I hand-
built a geometrically-correct polar mount out of the pipe from a
DirecTV wall mount and an ordinary TV antenna rotor. *It tracked the
arc perfectly for a small Ku dish. *I still have it and I'll post a
picture if anybody wants to see it.

I hope this helps.

"Sal"

John Ferrell W8CCW

OK. I dug it out and I'll snap some pix later.

Questions: Do you understand the geometry involved in a polar mount?
How about the concept of declination, whereby you compensate for the
fact that you are not on the Equator? When I bought my 10-foot dish
(1986) it came with instructions that included a table of declination
vs. latitude and a corresponding adjustment scale on the mount
itself. With a do-it-yourself dish, you have to "do it yourself." hi
hi.

I ask because the web has a number of tutorials on the subject of
backyard dishes. If you don't already have the knowledge, you may
wish to search now. Not a big deal, but if you fail to apply the
correction, you can't track the arc faithfully.

On the side: We are discussing herein a polar mount, whose operation
adjusts azimuth and elevation simultaneously. There is also an AZ-EL
mount that permits you to manually aim at each satellite, based on
pointing info derived for your location. Simpler, but not much fun
to build.

"Sal"
KD6VKW
(Vicious Killer Weasel)

On Aug 13, 10:27*am, John Ferrell wrote:
I would like to see the picture. If no one else is interested you can
email the picture. My email is in the clear.

John Ferrell W8CCW

OK, I sent two pictures in a private email to your address on
qrz.com. For some reason, I only see part of your email address
here. (My email provider discontinued Newsgroups this year and I'm
still getting the hang of Google Groups. Maybe I should try Yahoo
Groups or pay for a real NG server.)

"Sal"