Astra 19,2 °E is not 1 satelite, but 4, Astra 19,2 °E consists of these satellites : Astra 1KR ,Astra 1L, Astra 1M, Astra 1N . And MTV germany was encrypted from 2011 until 2017. I was waitching MTV Switzerland all these years, they where broadcasting on another satelite but it was the same as the german version( i know because a friend of mine had a paytv subscription and they had mtv in their basic plan)until MTV germany started to broadcast in SD for free again. But over the years the shows got worse (people just don't like pay tv here, it was actually preaty dumb for mtv to encrypt the main mtv channel, they have gone from a popular channel to a channel barely anyone is watching)

So they’re free but you pay monthly? Hmmm…

@@thatonetime7514 Yes, you have to pay that fee anyway. So you don't need to pay extra to watch TV.

Hehe i live in Norway and the here we see German television which my dad set up with a giant ass parabol my dad fixed yesrs ago

well hello fellow 19.2 astra viewer

@@rubysamurai306 while your dad is at it, tell him about 28.2 satelite in UK. Most channels are free-to-air (similar system to germany) and you should be able to see it from Norway (i do from Sweden)

not much of an issue. The Clark Belt indeed it's in the equator, but if the satellite footprint reaches the US, everything will be fine. Satellites' footprints commonly gets blocked along the meridians but not too much along the tropics

I bought a couple RV dishes with built-in motors and they just have the pan/tilt setup as well. Maybe I'll do a custom mount for my big C-band dish when I get around to installing it.

@@saveitforparts haven’t come across any of the automatic RV dishes personally but I’d assume if you wrote your own software to move it I wouldn’t see any reason you couldn’t track the arc. But nearly all of the DTH dish services dishes are too small for reliable free to air use. At best you can pick up the higher power FTA services and not reliably. Dish services get away with smaller dishes because they are pushing a lot of power. A 90cm dish is considered required to reliably pick up most KU FTA signals and 120cm can be used with a special mount and scaler and a C-band LNBF for higher powered c-band signals. And a minimum of a 10’ dish, with a few caveats, for reliable c-band signals. I use dish network dishes for stationary dishes, they are cheap and plentiful and easily modified. Reliability of signal is the main downfall in snow and rain. And as mentioned before only on more powerful signals. The other hurdle now adays is a reliable way to control the actuator to move a c-band dish. Before trade relations with China heated up under Trump (not being political just stating what happened) the best option was a Titanium satellite ASC-1 dish mover paired with and FTA receiver would reliably and move the dish automatically (once set up) with the single Fta remote. It also allowed use of older style feed horns with polarity actuators, which are superior to modern voltage controlled LNBF’s though much more expensive. You might be able to find a used ASC-1 on eBay and I recommend it over the other option as it’s cheaply built and the relays will fail, quickly. It is also possible if you have an old receiver with motor control to move a c-band dish but it is not automated . There are a few forums, most notably satelliteguys.us that will have a lot of information on FTA, from setup to hardware it’s all there. Just no talk of hacking or pirating is allowed. Another forum that can have decent information is ricks satellite but he’s got a pretty tight control over hardware discussions and you will be banned for talking about anything he doesn’t sell as he seems those cheep China receivers and those are a forbidden subject.

I haven't gotten into hamsats yet but it's something I'd like to try! I also have an old C-band dish junking up my back yard right now that needs a pointing system and mount when I get around to it.

Genuine question: Do you hams talk about anything other than your callsign, where you're messaging from, how clear the signal is, a d what equipment you're using? TLDR: Do you guys actually have conversations or just check boxes?

It's not a fantastic mount, just an old security camera base. I need to get or make a bigger one!

The " Sporbeam"😂 Its so spot on, i live in germany and can recive every channel 😃😂

😊

Interesting, I still don't know that much about actual commercial TV since I end up doing other stuff with these.

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/p5hzds9kqN6rl30.html This is an all in one tool used by satellite technicians to set the dish properly, you will find such tool fun/easier to use

Thanks for speaking for ppl in the US. I didn't realize I was supposed to look at it as alien tech. I will do so now.

@@jam9297 seems like I needed to make the "not criticizing" remark bold, didn't mean to offend anyone

It was big in the US back then. They started encrypting everything and now most FTA stuff is either religious or not in English, hence why it has almost completely fallen out of favor.

Living in the USA I find FTA satellite a whole lot more interesting than anything we can get locally or through a subscription service like dish network. Id rather watch galaxy 19 than pay $150 a month for stuff that's mostly manufactured drama. At least G19 is mostly real life stuff like news and documentaries I can learn something from. It's always interesting to see the rest of the world.

Yeah I kind of want more old huge dishes for radio astronomy and weather satellite downlinks and stuff. Gotta make my house look like a TV station :-D

Interesting on the polarity switch, I'll have to look into that. It would be fun to do a more dedicated downlink station but I have too many projects going on :-)

I think you need a digital TV antenna for local channels. I actually don't have one of those, I'm too busy to watch TV most of the time!

Yeah, I figured it was mostly foreign propaganda and religion, and that seemed to be the case. I know there's some PBS / NASA stuff on C-band, I jut have to get my bigger dish set up.

@@saveitforpartsI think much of what is on FTA Satellite can also be found on IPTV, so for people with decent internet speeds can get the same programming as FTA without the extra hardware. I am not expert on IPTV, so not exactly sure what is out there other than is very similar to FTA Sat TV... I have a C-Band sat dish, but it has been retired for many years now. It was cool and fun in back in the 80s and into the 90s before Direct TV. Use to watch prime TV shows (ie Star Trek - The Next Generation) uploaded to the networks about 1 week before they air nationally and sport backhauls, all without the commercials.

There are some FTA feeds of NBC and a few other "real channels" on the ku band but most anything of interest is on C band

The normal TV antenna works with ground based transmitters and the dish antenna can pick up the MUCH fainter signals from space think of the dish acting like a magnifying glass and the thing on a stick attached to the dish as ants

@@johnray854 how do you install all that?

Must be an indicator of the build quality on these cheap import electronics :-D

This is one of my early satellite experiment videos, I just started poking around with old junk I collected and seeing what I could do with it. Even when I get things wrong, I try to learn from it!

Yeah I was thinking the rate he is moving it, he could not find a transmitter on a power pole.

Good to know, I'll see if my cheap receiver has a setting for that next time I try it!

That sounds better than the US, over here the only free stuff these small dishes can see is religion and shopping. I have some bigger dishes and I'll see what else I can pick up with those.

I've found dishpointer.com to be really helpful for aiming at specific satellites. It shows you on a map which way to point, and tells you the elevation angle and the skew (how much to rotate the dish). It's a little annoying to find specific satellites in the giant drop-down list, but once you know the orbital slot (degrees E or W) of the satellite you want, you can find it quicker. The other website I've used is lyngsat.com, which lists what free channels are on specific satellites. Hope that helps!

No way to transmit with this stuff. If I ever get into hamsats I might build a directional antenna, but that's a different band and signal type.

@@saveitforparts very interesting, thank you.

No, you need a different type of lnb and a transmitter - hams uses equipment to transmit and receive with just a basic beam antenna and a handheld transceiver. But they are ham satellites or even the iss

I need to figure out a good dish rotator / aiming system. Nobody really makes those anymore, since no one uses the big C-band dishes for TV. There are little rotors for small antennas, but they won't handle much weight.

There is, and I gave it a try for certain satellites, but there still seems to be a lot of variation in elevation and tilt based on how many trees and buildings are nearby.

Maybe not with these little dishes, unless I'm doing something wrong. I have a bigger old-style dish I'll try when I get around to building a mount.

What part had that issue? I re-watched and didn't notice it, maybe internet lag?

@@saveitforparts I was seeing things being said but I was not hearing what I was seeing said on the screen.

This should work anywhere that has satellite coverage, I've heard there are more free channels in other countries.

No idea, I was just trying to get the free channels but they're all foreign religions and home shopping.

I just have two 9V batteries rigged to an extra coax cable. That works when I'm using the SDR on the laptop, when I use the receiver box it powers the dish.

"Red Dawn" warning alert station.

I think most of the stuff is shown in the video, most of the materials are just junk I found. The mount is a Vicon MicroPan used for security cameras. I'd actually recommend you use something else, as it's not quite strong enough for a regular TV dish in all angles. The radio software is GQRX, I can't remember which SDR I used for this video, but the RTL-SDR Blog v3 is a good one.

That's no secret