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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?"
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.
Get a biquad,2.4 GHz amplifier, and an AWUS 036h. Install Backtrack, set to monitor mode and start scanning your town!
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.
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.
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...
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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.
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?
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.
Maybe a TV broadcast from Omicron Persei 8?
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.
I don't get it. How would a 10' dish help him achieve first posts? And why bother?
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.
Line with tinfoil. Hang a grill over the focal point. Point at sun.
Cook sun-dried beef jerky.
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
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/
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.
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.
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petes-brain.com - it must be a scary place in there...
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."
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.
Are you suggesting that wouldn't meet the goal of being "fun?"
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.
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 think you're overstating the case.
First, the focal point isn't so much a "point" as a reasonably sized zone.
Second, the tinfoil itself isn't going to sit precisely flat and perfect; you're going to double or triple the size of the zone, easily.
Third, you're going to get some loss to wrinkling.
Fourth, you'll lose a good amount of energy to whatever shadow your cooking object casts.
A highly wet object (brined/marinated meat) is going to cook for quite a bit in that spot without "bursting into flames."
What you'll get is going to look a lot like this. Given that one is actually mirrored and is maybe 5-6ft diameter, back-of-the-napkin math says a 10-ft aluminum foil slapdash job should be in the right ballpark.
Worlds biggest stir-fry?
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.
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.
I don't get it. How would a 10' dish help him achieve first posts?
"Hey CmdrTaco, I'll trade you this 10' dish for letting me get first post."
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
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.
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
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.
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.
If you're actually interested in building something like this, check out http://www.cockeyed.com/incredible/solardish/dish01.shtml which documents the process he went through to build the "light sharpener." For spoilers of it setting things on fire skip to the last page.
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.
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
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)
That dish would be a C-Band dish. Most television is Ku-Band these days. The C-Band is still used however, but mostly for network to network communications. A lot of that is still unencrypted because most people have the pizza sized dishes.
The pickup on the dish however may be a combination C/Ku band however and that would work with any satellite feed.
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.
Protest HBO's rates by interfering with their signal!
$12.95/MONTH? NO WAY !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._MacDougall