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Fun To Be Had With a 10-Foot Satellite Dish?
An anonymous reader writes "I'm moving to a rural community in the central United States. On the property is a satellite dish in excess of 3 meters in diameter that seems to still be in excellent condition. I already enjoy shortwave radio and was wondering what interesting TV feeds I might be able to catch with the dish. What kind of equipment would I need and how much should I expect to spend? If it's not useful for that purpose, what other fun projects might I use it for?"
Amateur radio astronomy? First post?
"Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead."
or listen for military transmissions
UVB-76 has been broadcasting new stuff the past few days...
You might even get airborne, in which case you have a real flying saucer. At the very least, it would scare the crap out of the snow-boarders.
You could use it to make a flying saucer for halloween.
Get a biquad,2.4 GHz amplifier, and an AWUS 036h. Install Backtrack, set to monitor mode and start scanning your town!
lots of FTA (Free To Air) stuff -- still have yet to put up my 3meter dish though...
Lay it flat, plug the centre hole and build a pond.
^^^^this. I was going to suggest taking it sledding, but I think hudson's got the right idea here :-)
Living With a Nerd
A giant frisbee!
You might be able to pick up the feeds to TV companies. I knew someone who did this years back but they might be encrypted now. They would sometimes pick up presenters chatting during advert breaks, people waiting to go on air, etc.
As seen here: http://www.cockeyed.com/incredible/solardish/dish01.shtml
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. - Neitzsche
a south african invention: put a gas cooker underneath it and prepare meals for ten! :-)
Attached it to the output terminal of a large tesla coil, and see if you can cause electric arcs to form between the ground and metallic objects, at a distance.
line it with mirrors and the focus becomes a solar furnace
Then change it one day and watch the internet implode.
My boss at the last place I worked had a number of extremely large dishes that he used for moon bounce: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EME_(communications)
Interesting stuff. I don't know how active and interesting the conversations are (as I understand there are relatively few people that do this) but from a technical perspective I think it's interesting to bounce a signal off the moon and listen to the result...
I've been told that his medium sized dish (approx 10' I suppose) worked best for this purpose...
I'm no expert on this; have only run into it before at that job...
1. Get a second satellite dish.
2. Attach a bar between the two, facing each other like this: (-)
3. Turn this setup onto its side.
4. Then mount the base of one dish, horizontally, so that one is facing up to the other, which is facing down.
5. Using a roll of 1-2' sheet metal (sheet aluminum works for me).
6. Attach one end of the sheet metal to the ground with a pair of small metal tent stakes.
7. Attach the other side of this to the dish that is facing up.
8. Spray paint the dishes & landing ramp the colour of your choice, if desired.
9. Presto!
When complete, you will have yourself a nice flying saucer in the yard, to be the envy of all your neighbors and friends.
At least, that's what I did once with two of three old satellite dishes in my yard...
Cheers!
--Stak
Holy happy hippy crap!
We did this at my school. We took a bunch of 3 meter dishes like on your property and turned them in to a astronomy farm. Now to be fair the software end of the project was intense to say the least but the pay off was huge. It was a sweet project and we accomplished it in under a year, It might be something for you to take a look at. Here are some links.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_astronomy
http://www.nrao.edu/index.php/learn/radioastronomy
http://www.radio-astronomy.net/
and some giant fritos...
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
I've always wanted to line one with Mylar, point it at the sun, and see what temperature you could generate at the focal point. How cool would it be to hang a crucible, and melt bronze?
There are loads of unencrypted satellite feeds. Whole communities of people who explore them can be discovered with a little Googling. They'll tell you what the best receivers are and how to set up a mechanism to swing the dish to different satellites. NASA TV comes to mind
Place 100's or 1000's of tiny mirrors all over it. Mount it on a cellestial tracking device pointed at the sun. Install a small boiler and use it to produce steam and turn a small turbine. Or, use it to burn insects out of the air!
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
You could do radio astronomy with this.
I would have thought anything worth having would be encrypted or encoded (TV station feeds would likely be encrypted to stop new shows being grabbed off the sattelite and uploaded to the internet commercial free before they ever air on the TV)
I've seen a few people make solar concentrators out of them, for thermal energy. Remember that sunlight is good for about 1 kiloWatt per square meter. The best way is to get 1-inch hex-shaped glass mirror - a whole shitload of them. Glue them onto the dish with epoxy until as much surface as possible is covered with them. You will get a few thousand degrees Fahrenheit temps at the focal point. You can use this to generate steam by putting a water block at the focal point - save on your heat bill, or make some electricity. For instance, by using an ordinary air-powered die grinder and run it on the steam instead. You can do a lot with 20 thousand RPM's that way.
C|N>K
Just buy an Azbox HD and check the feeds on Lyngsat, its all you need.
Bird bath
Hey, how's it going?
Start a private setchicks@thefarm project Get inspiration here. You can at least not do any worse than they have, even though three meters is a little smaller than the Arecibo. You won't be looking for any non-random signals, you can be more specific and look for chick music only, and remember size doesn't matter!
You'll need a bigger dish to post first.
You can get DVB listening equipment (or software) pretty easily. There are a lot of satellites out there that broadcast PBS for free, and other stuff. Program/broadcast listings are available variously on the interwebs.
Basically, you'll have a small receive suite, decide what you'd like to hunt, and calculate the azimuth/elevation for your lat/long/alt. I start by slewing with a sat meter (horizon) in the horizontal axis and locate the strongest point before sweeping vertically to the expected altitude. There's a lot of methods for accurate aiming. Google. There's a host of sat information on http://www.lyngsat.com/. It'll tell you things like the bird's location, what it carries, transponder types and configurations, etc.
I set up a small hughesnet based ISP in Afghanistan a few years ago with what most people would consider a horribly barebones set of gear (including a wifi mast crafted from a cable spool with a length of pipe stuck through it), and I can tell you that you can definitely get by with some fun and interesting signal grabbing with practically nothing. Rather than explain it with a poorly written slashdot comment, check out http://sattv.lounge0101.com/free_to_air_satellite.php for some basic info. Free-to-air stuff is just a fraction of what you can pick up.
There's also more interesting stuff out thee, with the correct equipment you'll discover amateur repeaters, very capturable simple data broadcasts, meteorological phenomena, and other cool junk. I believe there's even a radio station/repeater on the ISS. Failing satellite reception, it's still just a huge parabola which focuses on the feed horn. Replace the feed element with something from another band and voila. Of course, antenna optimization for something like this is a book in itself, but I imagine you could have reasonable dish utilization by throwing a 2.4Ghz-tuned biquad at the focus point and probably get about 20-30 dBi of additional gain.
If you live by the border, you can probably pick up the border patrol's predator drone feeds using the correct equipment/software. It's broadcast in plain-jane video most of the time, although since I doubt there's border agents down there with mobile terminals in this case, the area-wide broadcasts are probably disabled in favor of LOS. Might be able to pull it off though.
There are lots of feeds to find, if the dish has a motor.. You may need to get some different LNB;s the polorization of the antenna will determine what you can find... There are many many many lists available.. but for the most part, it will be lame... however, if you subscrive to Dish Network (or Bell ExpressVu if you are north of the border) and the mesh of the dish is less than 1/4" you can mount a Dish500 LNB on it and use it to get 100% signal from the Echostar (or nimiq) birds... even during a huge rainstorm or snowstorm
Whatever you do, don't make any broadcasts to alien vessels.
Also, any signals you receive from the alien's should not be made public,
or else YOU and your satelite dish will dissapear curtesy of secret UFO coverup agencies etc.
Eat this message.
-paul
There are many signals you can receive from space and 10ft is perfect for that.
With some equipment (preamplifier, receiver that can do 2.3GHz) you can receive signals from interplanetary sondes and classified satellites.
It's completely new world and if you enjoyed shortwave radio, you will love this.
For list of signals you can receive check http://www.uhf-satcom.com/ - 10ft will do L-band, S-band, C-band and X-band with correct feed.
Point the dish at your nearest neighbors house to make them paranoid.
SETI is the way to go here. Think of the possibilities. You can spend the next 50 years of your life fruitlessly listening to static from outer space!
Cover it with aluminum foil or something else that reflects light well, and try using it as a barbacue!
But with a dish that size you can fit it with quite a few antennas and add a motor to access an insane amount of satellites. A hassle to set up and maintain though.
.: Max Romantschuk
Aluminized Mylar sheet over the dish, vacuum pump behind the dish... Variable focus reflector. Yay!
A birdbath for ostriches and emus. Except, you need to leave it on the ground since they can't fly.
--<Mike>--
Remove the LNA bits, put your head in the same spot and then swivel the reflector towards a neighbor's house. Instant super ears. Now put a microphone in the same place, use the old coax line to bring the output into the home, connect to the audio input on your PC. Use Audacity to record the audio. Enjoy.
Cover it with tinfoil, wait for a sunny day, place a potato at the focus point of the dish. Eat.
I remember on a trip to jodrell bank playing around with a sound mirror where two dishes were placed pretty far apart. Due to the dishes focusing the sound where you stood, it was possible for someone to whisper into the other dish many meters away and for you to hear it.
One of the astronomers there told me that while calibrating the main 78m dish he started hearing childrens voices. They had coincidently pointed the dish at a local school and were able to hear everything said.
So may I suggest using the dish for a bit of covert surveillance of neighbours.
An umbrella.
GP has the right idea. The minute i saw the summary title, I thought, Toboggan!!!
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
I remember in the 90's my father was watching unencrypted feeds from the US air force, during the wars in Yugoslavia and the Gulf. Pretty amazing to watch live attack feeds...
Weld a black powder-coated tank at the focus, and set it up as a solar steam generator. Be careful, though - the focus is *very* hot. 3rd degree burns hot.
Learn about Photography Basics.
Just get you Amateur Radio license and start bouncing signals off of the moon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EME_(communications) http://www.nitehawk.com/rasmit/ws1_1.html An other option is watching "free to air" FTA TV channels. If you like to channel surf just Google FTA receiver. A good receiver plus C-Band (or C/Ku) LNB will cost about $200.
Get yourself good DVB-S2 receiver like PROF 7500 USB or PROF 7301 PCI or Azbox HD
from ebay or Ricks site http://www.gofastmotorsports.com/rickssatellitehome.htm
and check out all the HD feeds you can watch.
http://rickcaylor.websitetoolbox.com/
Satelliteguys is another good website but their wild feeds subforums is invitation only
http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-air-fta-discussion/
Try some amateur radio astronomy, now that you have the fixin`s for your very own radio telescope There`s plenty of suitable resources on the web, e.g.: http://www.signalone.com/radioastronomy/telescope/ http://www.bambi.net/sara.html http://www.nrao.edu/epo/amateur/
Something I've wanted to try- mount a speaker at the focal point (or actually a little off from the focal point, ideally you would focus the sound to a "point"), and then use it to torment the neighbors pets. Better yet is some manner of mounting something louder- something like a firecracker- at the focal point. And of course servo controlled X/Y pointing on the dish. And a camera "sight" in the dish connected to your computer so you can aim remotely.
I don't know how tight a focus you could get out of a TV dish, I don't know if quite the right shape.
Or, you could get two of them and then.... torment two pets at once?
A large radio telescope makes a very good audio dish (the wavelengths are similar). If you can point it to the horizon, you might be able to hear conversations a mile or more off. Of course, it works both ways - they can hear you well too.
I was once working on the receiver of a dish on the Potomac, while the dish was at "service" (i.e., pointed to the horizon, in this case over the water). When a sailboat would go through the beam, I could barely see it, but could hear the creak of the rigging and the slosh of the water, as if I was on it.
that, or he could bring a new meaning to 'Extreme Frisbee'.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
i have a crazy texan cousin-in-law that ran up against the same dilemma the christmas that they purchased a dish network rig. the ol ~10' dish's newfound uselessness was accompanied by a freak snow storm that dumped 1.5 foot of snow.
apparently every farmer in texas has an old snowmobile somewhere in their possession. an old tractor seat (with improvised belt) got bolted to the inside of the dish and someone came up w/ 30' of rope for towing.
we never were able to flip it over, but airborne? yes.
---
petes-brain.com - it must be a scary place in there...
Whole communities of people who explore them can be discovered with a little Googling. They'll tell you what the best receivers are and how to set up a mechanism to swing the dish to different satellites.mua ban xe
There's a number of people that have turned old TV antennas into radio telescopes.
Here's an example:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Poor-Man-s-Radio-Telescope/
For more just google "DIY radio antenna"
There's even online stores that sell everything you need:
http://www.radioastronomysupplies.com/radio_astronomy_supplies.php
It could be an interesting project.
----- "Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand."
I saw a solar furnace at a sustainability fair a couple years ago. It tracks the sun and is generally used to heat water. It is built with a satellite dish lined with mirrored material:
http://www.krawlr.com/solarfurnace/solarfurnace.htm
Set it up as a bird bath, and get yourself a shotgun. With the size of the birds that would visit, you could feed your whole family.
GIANT PAELLA
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
As someone who had one of these, I can tell you they make excellent lightning rods... Not so good for the electronics, however.
Spy on the spies, and listen to signals from (HEO and geostationary) spy satellites.
http://www.lyngsat.com/
You'll need some sort of receiver (lots are linux based), aim for a Dreambox, or equivalent. It's likely yo'll need to replace the LNB and cabling if it's been neglected for any length of time. You should also check to see if the dish is steerable (doubtful for that large size - too hard to stop it moving in the wind) and also get a satellite alignment meter and a compass to point to whichever satellite takes your fancy. Reckon on less than $1000, maybe even less than $500.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Find an 80 foot dog and play Frisbee fetch!
Paint a giant bloodshot eyeball on it and point it at a paranoid neighbor.
Make a huge solar concentrator / death ray with it
You are hereby served notice regarding your improper use of the UGI patented "3 Step Process". The UGI (Underpants Gnomes International) have established that all "3 Step Processes" must take the form of
If you continue to use your errant "3 Step Process" legal action may follow.
IAAUGL
The Underpants Gnomes International do wish to make a constructive suggestion. The use of A B C instead of 1 2 3 would not be in violation of the UGI's patent.
Screw you guys. I'm going home.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Its not the size of your dish its how you use it.
You might be a redneck if you've ever had sex in a satellite dish.
Look up "FTA Free to Air satellite "on google. start reading.
you will have to buy new feed-horns and I recommend also getting a decent HD FTA receiver. that can do both MPEG2 and MPEG4.
In about 1 month, you will have all the knowledge you need to find a crap-load of free TV. some strange, some normal, if you are into soccer then all the South america feeds will delight you as it seems there are about 987 channels of nothing but soccer... Oops sorry. Futbol!
the C band dish will allow you to watch some of the older stuff, but you can get a dual feed-horn to put both a C band and Ka band LNB on there to get all channels. add in a high end one that will do both polarization types and you expand your channel choices even further.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I always wanted to use the 26 meter dish we have at work to sniff wireless network off of the International Space Station. We are at the wrong latitude but it might work for you.
Put a speaker at the focal point.
Aim it at your neighbor's house.
Play recordings of devil worship, or islamic call to prayer, a Tammy Faye Baker show, or whatever else.
Watch your neighbor get taken away by the men in white coats.
Put a Biquad antenna at the focal point and a wifi usb reciever connected to it... and use it to steal WiFi from the ISS as it flys over.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Hint. Don't stand on your head wearing it when the sun's out.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
you may want to have a look at a website called lyngsat http://www.lyngsat.com/ for feeds and permanent services on satellite.
If you have a loud girl/boyfriend
5 - Interesting ?
Are you all mad. It's a joke ! If you did that for real you'd crash into random objects as it'd be completely uncontrollable.
'Nuff said
Worst Sig Ever
A 10 foot wok can fry a lot of chinese food.
I'd recommend picking up a FTA sat receiver and see what all you can grab. They have uncompressed HD signals out there that look pretty cool. Not to mention all the random channels and whatnot that somehow still broadcast.
Worlds biggest stir-fry?
Big dish can be a blast to play with!
You will need to know if it has both C and Ku band in it (You can look up online what to look for)
Then use lyngsat to look up the satellites that are available and what is out there.
Here is a link to lyngsat for the us.
http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/United-States.html
You will need to get a DVB receiver for the mpeg encoded DVB transmissions.
All in all it is fun and you can get just over 3000 channels with the right equipment
Replace the current receiver components with a WiFi antenna. Then, point it at neighboring farms/homes and hope to find an unencrypted WiFi connection.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
You've obviously never gone saucering (or tubing). It's not "totally uncontrollable". You can maneuver by changing your center of gravity, dragging a hand or foot over the side, catching the wind on the underside, etc.
Besides, people do insane things all the time for fun. bungee-jumping, parachuting, ski-jumping, boxing, paying money to watch "pro wrestling", etc.
Even neater would be if the dish was one of those "open mesh" dishes, with round perforations to let the wind through. Take bubble-wrap with the same spacing, and stick it to the outside. Going downhill, you not only combine the joys of saucering and breaking bubble-wrap (EVERYONE loves to break bubble-wrap), but if the snow is packed densely enough, the noise would serve as an audible warning, sort of like the external speakers on the Prius in Japan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t1KGMw0lws&feature=related
As a follow-up, if you want something that really IS out of control, try the lid of a toilet seat upside-down going downhill. It's so small that you're spending all your effort just staying perched on it, and it's so slick that you really pick up speed fast - half the time you're not even facing forward because it spins. Totally out of control and totally fun!
Hey, we were kids and we invented our own fun. The bruises were worth it.
Glue tiny mirrors all over the inside and burn things from a distance.
It's been done before, reputedly by the old greeks first, but it's still a worthy endeavour. Burning or blowing up things always is.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Scrounger's guide to Sat TV
http://www.nmia.com/~roberts/scrounge
Free to air Sat receivers
http://www.tech-faq.com/free-to-air-receivers.html
If you don't want to go TV, you can make spiffy outdoor table canopies from them, or use them for home solar thermal alt energy projects, once you have a tracker. I've seen them used for the tops/roofs on backyard small buildings as well.
I wonder if that's an old C Band free-to-air satellite TV dish? It sounds like it's on the large side, but it might work. Search "free to air" and you'll find the required LNB (low noise block converter) and receiver. Couple that with a small Ku-Band dish (one meter or less) and you'll have all the free-to-air your dishes can see. Check out www.lyngsat.com for lists of satellites, frequencies, and TV stations available. Big dishes give you more gain (stronger signal, was important back in the analog days, and still helps for C-Band), but bigger dishes have much smaller look angles (like a telescope versus binoculars) and are harder to aim.
I just have a one meter Ku Band dish. I recommend even smaller, to be easier to aim, unless you live really far from the equator. When I lived in northern New York the extra gain of a one meter dish helped a lot. We mostly point to the bird at 97 degrees west, and pick up about a hundred free channels. Many different languages, some good music and sometimes movies. But the only English-language channels are news and religion. If you are Chinese or Iranian, there is an excellent variety to choose from. Other satellites have more Spanish language, from what I've seen on lyngsat.
The receiver is the most expensive part, and it can be had for $100 or $200. If you want one that accepts smart cards, to descramble the pay channels, it might cost a bit more.
I added some of the detail above not for the original poster but for anyone else who might be interested.
What you have is a C-band dish. You can use it with a Ku band LNB.
You can see here what is in your range. With Ku band LNB that would be a lot. I don't know for sure about C-band LNB.
http://www.lyngsat.com/
Disclaimer: I am from Europe, where Ku band is used for satellite dish tv and radio.
Parabolic reflector could be used to concentrate sound waves as well.
http://hackedgadgets.com/2009/03/19/smart-petal-solar-collector/
http://www.cleanergyindustries.com/production.html
It's aluminum. Take a six pack and some wrenches and take out your frustrations on it one afternoon. Then take it to the scrap yard and sell it. Aluminum has been going for $0.80 to $1.00 per pound the past year. Make sure it's "clean" with no ferrous metal still connected or you'll get maybe half that. While you're at it, take out the pipe it's set on and sell that too. Not much per pound, but lots of pounds. And then cover the hole over. And buy something nice with the money. And bring me some. You never take me anywhere anymore.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
"interesting" "TV feeds"
That's your problem, right there.
I didn't see thid idea posted yet and I am a little surprised. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I3e_NkXNC0 Fill it with mirrors and make a death ray.
like they did earlier this year in Abu Gosh, Israel: http://community.guinnessworldrecords.com/_The-largest-serving-of-hummus/blog/1713298/7691.html They used a satellite dish to hold it all for the world record attempt.
burn things
Get ahold of a few hundred small frameless hand mirrors, and epoxy putty them to the inside of the dish so they reflect on a mirror size target in the center.
You can either place a Stirling engine's hot section in the center or use it to solar cook just about anything, or even put another mirror there to reflect the light somewhere else where you lens it onto a high efficiency solar panel.
Power and heat, cheap.
Google for c band satellite tv. You will find several sources of equipment and programming. I am not sure if there is free programming. There probably is. Commercial users (cable companies and networks) us this band.
I was paying $100.00 USD per YEAR for BUD satellite programing. I was getting around 3,000 digital channels. I didn't sign up for any of the move channels.
2. Find some neighbors' kids that need to be actively denied.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
I have a whole planet with vast resources and a global interweb full of most of human knowledge. Is there anything I can do with it?
Up here in Michigan we throw rocks or poke at cornered wolverines.
No, the animal.. not the panzy college students... they just whine in the alleyway when you do that to them... No fun at all.
GO SPARTIANS!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
http://www.ranum.com/fun/projects/gazebo/index.html
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
We used to do this with car hoods flipped over.
Free-To-Air (FTA) feeds and Wildfeeds are plentiful. Do some reading on http://www.satforums.com/ see if you can steer the dish, and if it's possible to enable it for Ku as well a C band (I'm guessing it's C because of the size). You can often refit a C band mesh dish to work on Ku by laying metal window screening on the surface of the reflector. Then you have to mount a KU feed at the focal point, usually offset next to the C feedhorn. Great site to find out what you can view FTA from your location: Lyngsat, for the central US try this page. To see if you can view a satellite from your location there are simple calculators on Lyngsat.
If its parabolic, it sounds like the perfect start to a solar project of some sort. Just find a way to coat the dish with something reflective. (mylar? mirrors?) A little tracking SW and you could get your hot water for free.
Guacamole time!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
GO SPARTIANS!
Your alma mater must be so proud. :-P
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Obviously, the only real use for this is to play frisbee using giant robots.
Now someone make me a giant robot already.
It's not the size of your dish, its what you stick it in... er, point it at.
If you get tired of listen for radio waves, and looking for "wild feed" TV signals, then I'd suggest you go green and use it as a (parabolic) solar oven to cook with.
There are plenty of plans and ideas online for you to try. Some easy metal work, and food cooked for free as a reward, what more can any guy ask for?
Make it shiny and you've got one hell of an energy collector.
Solar Cooker
Solar Furnace
Solar Destruction
In my last gig in Africa we took old dishes, mounted them inverted on a pole, covered them with grass and made them in to tiki bars!
I think that would qualify as "fun".
.. jacuzzi.
(as your eagle might get wet, this will do as bird bath as well)
It's a great hobby. I have both a 10' and 12' CBand dishes along with a Primestar KU dish installed in my back yard.
Here's a list of free programming available on C band: http://www.global-cm.net/MPEGlistCBandUS.html
$150 to $450 in equipment should get you running. You'll need a digital DVB-S/S2 receiver and a compatible LNBF. You will also need some means of aiming the dish. It could be a hand crank or a linear actuator with an appropriate controller.
I like the AZBox line of digital receivers http://azbox.com/. These are Hi Definition receivers that support the latest DVB-S2 transmission standards and are one of the few receivers that will decode 4:2:2 video used by some of the networks. The Ultra, Elite, and Premium models will allow you to connect a hard drive for program recording.
There's also lots of older used equipment available from ebay. The older equipment will probably not support DVB-S2 transmissions.
and top the achievement of mythbusters
Could try using a lot of power and making a big WiFi director. If you mount the regular Pringles Cantenna at the appropriate point then the dish acts as a collector.
Because this question has been asked numerous times. Most recently: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/08/07/15/1953254/Alternative-Uses-For-an-Old-Satellite-Dish
Dude ! - grease the back side and hit the slopes.... this is a five man (or 10 kid) snow disc! Or, you could tie a rope on it and drag it behind a 4x4 truck in a field (aka...Kansas Ski Slope) - works with or without snow !
Dishes of that size are not as convex as they are concave. Most have a hefty framework on the backside to allow mounting that would prevent use as a sled.
You might find some that use a bolt-on mounting framework, but most that I've seen are integral.
I apologize for urinating on your morning nutrition.
"Lame" - Galaxar
Use it for assertiveness. Carry it around and when some idiot starts nagging you, throw it onto him/her, cause a mini-eclipse and speak the utterly cool words "Talk to the dish 'cause the universe ain't listenin'." Wiggle your head and impress your buddies.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
http://www.cockeyed.com/incredible/solardish/dish01.shtml
Nathan
New Slashdot headline: Drunken man shoots Ask Slashdot subby's 10m satellite with his .45 in ./ data center headline duel.
I live in a very rural area in the Southern California high desert not far from Nevada (Look! There goes Art Bell!) and used to have a C Band dish. After I first moved here (1990 or so) you could tune a few transponders in with a video receiver that had Frequency Division Multiplex (FDM) on them. This is just a fancy way of saying "many little SSB carriers". Connecting a radio that receives short wave to the sat receiver allowed you to listen to phone calls from Alaska and Hawaii. You'd change channels by simply tuning the radio between channels. You'd only hear one side of the conversation but it was kind of interesting at the time. I 'm pretty sure that's all gone now that those places actually have been connected via fiber. (Look! UFO's!) TV was just going scrambled but there were a few things "still in the clear". I suspect that that's still the case. There's also FTA "Free to Air" digital TV or DVB. Consider setting up a couple of long wire antennas, one "North -South" another "East - West". The absence of noise allows you to receive some interesting things on SW.
If you have an interest in weather it's fairly easy and cheap to start receiving NOAAport broadcasts (which include model data, satellite imagery, radar data, surface observations, etc). Most of the data is going to be overkill if you aren't a meteorologist though. http://www.geo-web.org.uk/noaaport.pdf
With a little duct tape, you turn it into a HUGE stir-fry. I'd suggest using vegetable oil instead of motor oil, though.
You call this a signature?
if its a mesh dish depending on the mesh size it may be a very poor dish to use for dvb on the other hand if its an andrews dish solid spun aluminum its a great find for feed hunting and will work for c band and ku band transmissions just fine lyngesat.com and satcodx.com for info of whats upthere
When I was a kid, we used our neighbor's dish as a really cool slide. It was propped up against a tree, and we would try to climb up to the top to slide down. I'm sure I ripped up a couple of pairs of corduroys on it. Might not be as fun as an adult now, but still cool.
We had one of these on our property and turned it into a duck pond. Okay, not exactly geeky, and it requires it to be a solid dish, not mesh, but ducks are still pretty cool.
http://tinyurl.com/waddlewaddle
You have just got yourself a big new hot tub. Congrats!
Unless its one made of mesh, then its just a hammock I guess.
Three words
College cafeteria trays
as the OP removes his hat to reveal...the nerdy Jonah Hex! ...from Origins of the so-called So-so-superheroes
solar dish. Put a Stirling engine at the focal point. Cover the dish in Mylar.
http://www.reuk.co.uk/Stirling-Engine-Solar-Power.htm
You could also use it to hold guacamole dip.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Use it as a NOAAPort receiver: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/marine/noaaport.htm
5 - Interesting ?
Are you all mad. It's a joke ! If you did that for real you'd crash into random objects as it'd be completely uncontrollable.
I'm sorry, but your post just made it sound even more fun!
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
1) Invert said dish 2) Place on head 3) Insert hands into opposing arms' sleeve 4) Stick out front teeth
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
Are you sure you're not the one who's drunk?
The equipment to make it work is hard to find and most of the channels are encrypted now. They have a cable-card based decoding system. Even at that, it's a pain in the butt.
Mine broke into 8 triangular sections. Although it would never have worked for skiing (it is a mesh material that would have just acted like a sieve until it filled with snow), I always though it would be interesting to take the sections apart and make a bunch of sculptures--ladybugs perhaps (they are approximately wing-shaped sections).
Barring something artistic, I'd arrange to sell it for scrap metal.
--
.nosig
But the SETI League has a use for it.
It's like a tinfoil hat for your whole family. Duh.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Cover it in foil and mount a strobe to the receiver....result: Big Ass Strobe Light. :-)
Posterity, my posterior.
If you aren't interested, contact your local astronomy club and see if they can find a home for it.
Have gnu, will travel.
Flip it over and climb underneath to prevent Major League Baseball from spying on you.
Getting a crapload of lightsharpener traffic from this thread. ;)
Building the 12' mirrored Light Sharpener was pretty easy. Check craigslist for people dumping mirrors from their bathroom remodel and cut them into squares with a $3 glass cutter. Attach with liquid nails. I used about 850 4"x4" squares. Don't worry about the geometry of fitting them together like a puzzle, it works out fine.
I didn't invest the time to make it track the sun because I just wanted to play with it, burning and melting stuff like I had seen with the Solar Death Ray.
Aluminum foil heated stuff up, got wood to smoke but not flame.
Mirrors ignited wood in 15 seconds or so. I dried a soaking wet shirt in 3 minutes, then it burst into flames. Jiffy Pop and the watermelon were my favorite. We were literally too scared to keep the coconut on there for more than 2 minutes. We knew we had a tropical bomb up there. Should have drilled a relief hole and watched the cocomilk steam shoot out of it!
We tried to pump water past the focal point, but it takes a pretty powerful pump to get water 8 feet into the air, and if the water stalls, you get steam shooting out which you cannot turn off. I did not get ahold of a steam engine and I didn't try a Sterling engine, both of which require more engineering and money than the giant mirrored death ray.
No one died.
Forget TV. Make a solar collector, generate steam, and make a 1-3KW power plant out of it, then show all your neighbors how to do it too.
Please please please tell me you were wearing pants while doing this... Happy place.. happy place.. happy place
i have a crazy texan cousin-in-law that ran up against the same dilemma the christmas that they purchased a dish network rig. the ol ~10' dish's newfound uselessness was accompanied by a freak snow storm that dumped 1.5 foot of snow. apparently every farmer in texas has an old snowmobile somewhere in their possession. an old tractor seat (with improvised belt) got bolted to the inside of the dish and someone came up w/ 30' of rope for towing. we never were able to flip it over, but airborne? yes.
I knew a guy who did this. He was riding in an inner tube behind 30 feet of rope when the person on the skimobile did a hard turn and misjudged clearances. Guy on the inner tube got whipped sideways and went through the side of a barn.
He was very, very, very, very screwed-up.
When you're on a snowmobile and you smash it into a tree, it's because you drove it there. When you're on an inner tube and someone else is driving the snowmobile, their less-than-great judgment isn't going to hurt them, it's going to hurt *you*, and as a result they might take more risks with your person than you would take.
I'm not generally a safety-trumps-everything kind of dude -- I'm a bike racer, after all -- but I have to say that if you're going to try this particular sport, choose the person driving with a lot of care.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Due to a freaky legal issue, PBS continues to provide a C-band ANALOG service, the "PBS Satellite Service" on SES Americom Satellite AMC 4, Transponder 16-C, horizontal polarity, at 101 degrees West longitude.
PBS has satellite distribution to stations in the clear (again, odd legal reason) on C-band Digital DVB-S QPSK on AMC 1 at 103W and Ku-band digital DVB-S QPSK on AMC 21 @ 125W.
Mount a microphone at the focal point. Level the dish and see how far out you can pick up a conversation. Cheap, Simple, Fun. Parabolic
No! I am SPARTANICUS!
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
one of my neighbors turned his 10' mesh dish into a sunshade over his outdoor fire pit.
at 1000 yds
you are what you is -- FZ
http://www.setileague.org/ has loads of info on horns that can be built or bought.
I've always wanted to try that. Wax the hell out of the bottom and put three people in it as a giant saucer sled, maybe drag it behind a truck on a snowed-over rural road. That's a ball when you have a bunch of buddies on sleds tied to the back of a vehicle.
A neighbor of mine had the bolt-on kind. Four holes at the center and that was it. I never did go sledding on it, sadly, but the bottom could've used some waxing as it was rough fiberglass.
I also have some rural property- not so far from civilization that I can't use my cell phone in certain areas on it, though. For quite a while I've had the idea to build a repeater to boost signal strength- at least in one important locale.
I have the first component- a WiEx zBoost repeater for the car (12V is important- no power at my ranch) and I have available several satellite TV dishes (the smaller, more recent variety- not the giant type described by the OP).
The plan is to put the 'outside the car' antenna at the focus of a dish and point the dish at one of the mountains nearby from where I suspect my strongest signals are coming. The 'inside the car' antenna would be simply mounted to a sheet of steel- say an old baking pan. The dish would be on top of a shade structure while the pan would be on the ceiling of the structure (antenna on the underside, broadcasting to the people under the structure.
I'm not a radio guy, but to my thinking, the two antennas wouldn't be able to cause any interference with each other in this configuration.
The repeater would be mounted under cover somewhere and should be powered by a car battery, which in turn is charged by a small solar panel.
Real low-buck concept here, but just some fiddling around with old parts so that cellphones would work better for myself and visitors to the ranch.
My other sig is a Porsche!
This might be fun:
http://www.ab9il.net/wlan-projects/wifi3.html
Make it into a death ray! Add mirrors all along the inside and they will focus to a point where the collector is. :)
http://hackaday.com/2005/03/23/solar-death-ray/
link in the article is dead but it has a picture :)
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Aside from getting your Amateur radio license and using our satellites, there are plenty of things you could do with a 10' dish, given the correct feedhorn.
1) Radio Astronomy
2) C/Ka band video feeds (mostly encrypted now)
3) Monitor commercial and US military satellites (some milsats have been taken over by central/south Americans as a free phone system).
4) Get really good satellite weather maps directly from the birds
5) ???
6) Profit!
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Mount your LNB's on it, and NEVER get rain fade
Put a loudspeaker instead of the actual antenna, aim the dish at the nearest church and then randomly play back a recording like "Hello puny humans, this is God, please disregard my previous messages and sorry for the inconveniences".
These work great on front wheel drive cars.
A) Drive the car so it has one under each rear tire. B) Engage the parking break. C) Drive. D) Turn sharply and floor it. E) Bring back your mom's car
I used A-E to keep that Underwear Gnome Lawyer off my arse.
You have a 10' satellite dish? The first thing that comes to mind is a 1/8th scale Eric Cartman.
It's been awhile since I've worked in satellite communications but you can use it to pick up free Satellite TV.
Most satellites that broadcast TV have a few stations broadcasting in the clear i.e no encryption but you need a few things. A basic guide for sat TV here http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/satellite-tv.htm needs to be read. You will need an LMB (Low Noise Block) to filter out background noise. It's my understanding that mos satellite receivers now days already come with LMBs built in these days so check specs. The predominately used receiver is most likely a Scientific Atlanta DSR. Some of transponders still broadcast on VCII but I doubt you'll find much in North America. With Digital satellite TV you can fit 12 channels on a signal transponder while analog it's one transponder one channel. You'll probably be using analog signal to start with since it's just easier.
Now you need a list of satellites for North America (or wherever you're from) can be found here http://www.lyngsat.com/ which has a complete listing would over. They will also detail type of feed channels and transponders of the satellites as well as type of encryption encoding etc. Again check specs on potential receivers.
Next you need to point it at a bird. 5 seconds on Google gave me this guide. http://searchwarp.com/swa40134.htm one thing we used to do is look up a channel broadcasting in the clear on the satellite we were aiming at on the Lyngsat site and then tune the satellite receiver to that transponder, channel and polarity so we could see how close we were getting to it by looking at clairty of signal on a TV.
In other words it's a big pain in the ass. You are probably better off using it as a bird feeder.
"For instance, by using an ordinary air-powered die grinder and run it on the steam instead. You can do a lot with 20 thousand RPM's that way."
It's clear that you haven't been around live steam before, because all the exhaust from your die grinder would SCALD YOU!
FAIL
Add a beat up pickup truck, 100 feet of rope, a long dirt road, and 5 drunk buddies and you could have a lot of fun with it! Be sure to capture the excitement on video though because you could also earn $10,000 or more.
I would put wheels on that mofo and ride it back to civilization.
what about a wireless lan antenna?
If the dish is parabolic, you can put a microphone at the focus and have yourself a womdiginously-huge parabolic microphone. Good for hearing an ant sneeze over half a mile away.
"There isn't a real-world problem I've come across that doesn't have common human ignorance at its core."
Protest HBO's rates by interfering with their signal!
$12.95/MONTH? NO WAY !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._MacDougall
The feedhorn was at the focal point when the dish was pointed at a satellite, but beause the sun appears to slowly move across the sky, the focal point of reflected sunlight is constantly moving. It is easier to move the target than to move the dish, so that is what I did.
If you have given your dish a reflective surface, in addition to using it to receive audio directly there is an interesting way to do it indirectly.
At the focus, right next to (or in place of) your microphone, install a light-sensitive device. Depending on the range it will be used at, and the amount of light available, sometimes this can even be a relatively insensitive device like a photoresistor. But you will usually get better results with something like a photodiode or a simple silicon solar cell.
Connect this to an audio amplifier. (It must be an amp suitable for the type of device. For example: photoresistors and photodiodes essentially change resistance, while a solar cell generates a voltage.)
Aim the dish at the window of a nearby house. Voices and sounds inside the house will vibrate the window, modulating the reflected light. You should be able to hear what is going on inside the house.
This is a variation on the scheme the Russians used on President Nixon. They had presented him with a large brass reproduction of the Presidential Seal as a gift. Nixon hung it in the Oval Office. The mount or frame of the seal was several inches thick, creating a hollow space behind. The Russians had rented some space in a building up the hill. They aimed microwaves at the window of the Oval Office. When Nixon spoke, it vibrated the thin metal of the seal, modulating the microwaves. Catching the reflected waves in a dish, all they had to do was hook up an audio amplifier to hear what was spoken in the Oval Office. Pretty clever, those Russians. But they did get caught eventually. I am not sure how. Someone probably detected the microwaves.
There are infrared laser versions of this device available, which don't use a big dish, but they cost about $3000 and they aren't usually sold to "civilians". But you can use a low-power infrared laser at night for your light source, or even just a focused array of infrared LEDs.
As long as the reflected light is bright enough (and that need not be very bright, considering you have a 10' dish), you should be able to listen to windows a mile away or more.
welcome our spider overlords
Http://cockeyed.com/incredible/solardish/dish01.shtml
Play "will it melt" with your friends.
Coat the inside of the dish with something highly reflective, they make a sticky-back mirror-surface film, find the focal length, and you can smelt your own iron!! Or what ever else people with large parabolic mirrors do.
ever heard of c band
http://cockeyed.com/incredible/solardish/dish01.shtml (sfw)
You might even get airborne, in which case you have a real flying saucer. At the very least, it would scare the crap out of the snow-boarders.
My suggestion was gonna be:
I like yours too though!
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
You could always help search for E.T.!
"The SETI League, Inc., pioneers in the use of backyard satellite TV dishes for SETI research, has since 1999 been hard at work on a new kind of radio telescope -- Array2k -- which will combine a multitude standard satellite TV antennas into a single powerful radio telescope, at a fraction of the cost of a single giant dish such as those at Green Bank and Jodrell Bank."
http://www.setileague.org/
look for FTA or free to air satellite
The Arrival
Ask Me About... The 80's!
If sledding won't work out, throw on some sides for a coracle and then take it floating downriver.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
What you have is the dish antenna that is part of a C band satellite TV receiver system.
First thing, I urge you to get in touch with the sellers or landlords and ask: "Do you have the old satellite receiver and LNA (low noise amplifier) that were used with the dish antenna?" The receiver and the LNA don't have much use for any other purpose and you can have a lot of fun if you get the equipment back from who ever may have it.
Satellite TV systems come in two flavours. The older system that uses the large 3 meter dish is called C band. The newer system is called Ku band and it uses a 18" dish. If your dish is fixed, then it is aimed at one satellite. Some dishes can tune in 2 satellites because they have 2 LNA units attached to the dish and the LNAs are at the two foci formed by two satellites that orbit overhead at intervals a few angular degrees apart.
My satellite receiver system is a "free to air" system that uses a motorized 18" dish. I can only tune in Ku or K band transmissions. Your big dish can tune in C band satellites. C band is a lower frequency transmission and a large dish is required because the satellites have an interesting bunch of technical problems related to bandwidth, noise and available electrical power in space.
My setup is a Coolsat 1000 Satellite receiver. It sits on the Cable TV wire, it produces a signal on Tv channel 3 when it is in use. From the receiver up to the roof is a single cable TV coax cable. DC power and a tuning signal is sent up the Coax to the Low noise amplifier. The LNA amplifies and mixes the tuning signal and the satellite signal. The result is down the cable comes the satellite TV signal at some standard frequency. If you have a motor drive, the same coax can carry control signals to the dish motor. On a Coolsat receiver you have to set the receiver with "Lnb power on" and "Lnb type Universal" and "LNB frequency 9.750/10.750" to cause the power to be sent and the conversion signal to be sent.
I knocked on the door of a fellow with a C-band system and the owner says he uses it all the time and no the system is not for sale. (I asked).
Getting my Satellite dish aimed at the right place in the sky took a bit of work. I used the book Positional Astronomy and Astro-Navigation Made Easy by H.R. Mills.
Then I made a satellite finder with a 14" wide sheet of foam board. I drew a 12" arc, 180 degrees (a half circle) with a base line or diameter, I put a 1" high screw at the center of the arc. The 90 degree perpendicular on the foam board I label as 122.5 degrees West, which is my longitude found from a map. Using lyngsat.com for satellite sky longitudes, I compute then plot angles on the foam board, keeping in mind that the 90 degree perpendicular on the foam board points to the 122.5 degree point in the sky. I mount the foam board on a photo tripod. With a compass and an inclinometer you go outside. The diameter of your half circle goes due north and south. The arc lays facing south. You tilt the foam board up until the board is inclined at 90 degrees minus your latitude. I live at 37.5 degrees so the tilt angle is 90 - 37.5. When you sight over the 1" screw head, and right over the arc of the foam board, you are pretty nearly looking at the ecliptic path of ~22,500 mile distant satellites from a ~6,500 km radius earth. The 1" screw head models the radius of the earth where you stand and the ~12" radius circle models the radius to the geosynchronous satellite orbital circle.
On K-band, the free to air material is mostly culture and religious broadcasts. Several of the K band satellites are mostly pay tv. The only un-encrypted channel on one satellite is a message "Congratulations you have tuned into .... blah blah network." Check out Lyngsat.com for what is on C-band. I wish I could confirm what you can pick up on C-band.
Grab an old microwave oven, short circuit the door safety lock and put the oven in the focus of your parabolic dish.
Slice some potatoes and put them into a microwave container located a mile away from the dish. Beam the dish towards the potatoes, check that no alive creature is crossing the beam, and then turn on power....
Solar Concentrator. If it was 3 meters in diameter, then it's about 7Kw of heat energy to do stuff with.
.
Voting up, Voting down - If I really gave a fuck about your approval or not, I'd come and ask you.
ET phone home.
Dialectician. Archology.
Evaporate a thin layer of aluminium onto the surface and use it to burn things with the power of a million suns.
As if there was any other choice.
What's still out there for programming on C- (and maybe Ku-?) band? I know that way back when home dishes first started, you could get the network backhauls from LA-NY (see what Johnny and Ed were chatting about during the commercial breaks!) and other "not intended for general consumption' programming, but I believe most if not all of those were eventually scrambled. So, what's available on the big systems, and is there anything particularly cool that's not also available on the newer DBS providers (Dish, DirecTV)?
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
You can still get the networks and pay networks, the days of unencrypted backhauls stopped, what about 1986-90, so you bought a box and subscription.
http://skyvision.com/programming/dsr410pack.html
http://www.galaxy-marketing.com/satellite_list_satellite_directory_for_north_america_with_frequencies.htm
Actually, a 3m dish would work well as a small radio telescope. A lot of hobbyists use them for SETI, in fact, since a small diameter dish has a wider field of view than larger dishes.
I have not lost my mind... it's backed up on disk somewhere!
There are literally thousands of free to receive signals on C and Ku. You use a C/Ku receiver to move the dish and skew the LNBs. But you use splitters and DiSqe switches and take the signals from the C and Ku LNBs to a new DVB receiver.
Each transponder that used to be dedicated to a single analog standard definition channel now carries dozens of standard definition or high definition MPEG compressed channels. And while some may be encrypted, many more are not. And that includes most sports "back hauls".
One advantage is that these signals are the very best looking MPEG available. Because, in most cases, the HD MPEG signal is going to be decompressed to analog HD, have a logo stuck on it and be recompressed, it has to be very nigh quality to start with. An excellent OTA HD signal can be 19.2 Mb/sec, though usually limited to 12 Mb/sec so they can have a weather channel. On your local cable channel, it might be reduced to a 6 Mb/sec QAM signal. But the DVB signal may be as much as 35 Mb/sec!
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
You could do aerials
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
http://www.a3bs.com/sun-runner-stirling-engine-u49325,1_p_83_111_868_0_10765.html
Place a microphone at the focal point and aim it at something distant, like birds or the house on the next farm. See how loud the chit chat can be from the neighbors a couple of miles away.
Use it to make a kick-ass Solar Oven......
It has been a long term dream of mine to create a statue that includes a 3 meter dish with the back half of a VW beetle. You get the picture I am sure, I don't care who does it, I just have held that image in my heads for more than 30 years. You have the chance to create art! Kitsch art, but art.
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.
One explanation I like for Fermi's paradox is the idea that making contact means giving technology, at least if that contact is any more than a hello and the leave again. Aliens carefully vet the species they come across for violent/sadistic/irrational tendencies and if such tendencies are found, avoid contact. In short they don't want to hand over interstellar travel and massive energy production technologies to anyone who might use them to cause harm. There are more than a few human scientists who wish(ed) they had taken this approach and burned their research. If you had technology that could destroy star systems which modern government would you give it to? It is a nice theory I think