Fun To Be Had With a 10-Foot Satellite Dish? 386
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?"
run your own SETI? (Score:2)
or listen for military transmissions
UVB-76? (Score:5, Funny)
UVB-76 [wikipedia.org] has been broadcasting new stuff the past few days...
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I am not that into HAM stuff, but I am almost absolutely positive that a 3m satellite receiver dish (designed for something between 4GHz and 18GHz) would do you absolutely no good when trying to pick up .004GHz transmissions. I could be wrong though.
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The antenna is what's really relevant. The dish is just a reflector, it's the horn that determines what you will be picking up. You can use those dishes for lower frequencies without problems.
Re:UVB-76? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually reflector size compared to wavelenght is very much relevant.
A shortwave radio signal with a wavelength of 64meters isn't going to be reflected very well by a 3m dish.
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no it won't. That said, you can always reflect shorter wavelengths with a bigger dish, hence he can do lots more with a 3m dish than with an 18" DSS/DirectTV dish.
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Re:UVB-76? (Score:5, Funny)
I am almost absolutely positive ... I could be wrong though.
Hey! Stop plagarizing my project status reports!
If you're looking for fun, you're doing it wrong (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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^^^^this. I was going to suggest taking it sledding, but I think hudson's got the right idea here :-)
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that, or he could bring a new meaning to 'Extreme Frisbee'.
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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.
---
pe [petes-brain.com]
Improper Use of the 3 Step Process (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Improper Use of the 3 Step Process (Score:4, Funny)
IAAUGL
I Am An Underpants Gnome Lawyer?
Probably. Or he choked on an orange while dictating.
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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
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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!
Re:If you're looking for fun, you're doing it wron (Score:5, Funny)
GO SPARTIANS!
Your alma mater must be so proud. :-P
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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.
How I use my parabolic dish... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Works great if you also happen to have a Silo on the property.
You could also use it for a really long wifi shot.
If you are a HAM you could use it for EME shoots.
Or you could use it for for home radio astronomy.
And there does seem to be a good number of free channels you can get but they are a little odd.
TV feeds to the TV companies (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:TV feeds to the TV companies (Score:5, Informative)
Those are called wildfeeds [wikipedia.org].
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Aloha Airlines Flight 243 [wikipedia.org].
Attach it to a Tesla coil. (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
solar furnace (Score:2)
Broadcast a cryptic signal for years (Score:5, Funny)
Then change it one day and watch the internet implode.
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Since governments don't actually acknowledge number stations, what would be the harm of starting your own?
Re:Broadcast a cryptic signal for years (Score:4, Funny)
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Since governments don't actually acknowledge number stations, what would be the harm of starting your own?
To give it an even geekier twist it could start with "three... one... four... one... five...".
Moon bounce (Score:5, Interesting)
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) [wikipedia.org]
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...
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Wow, that sounds way cooler than my initial thought of what you meant (somehow using the dish to build a giant inflatable carnival bouncing attraction).
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Wouldn't it be a lot easier to use a laser as the transmitter?
You can use the satellite dish to receive the bounce, if the surface is sufficiently shiny and polished.
Re:Moon bounce (Score:5, Interesting)
Moon bounce is the pretty cool. I'm not an expert either, but I am a HAM and have spent quite a few nights outside with friends playing around with a large (handmade) dish. Sure, moon bounce isn't real popular, but there is something very satisfying about being able to bounce a signal off the moon onto some far reaching part of the earth.
I don't have a powerful enough radio to do it very well, but we could still listen to other people quite well and every once in a while could make contact. Of course, we weren't using a nice manufactured dish like that, but had constructed one out of PVC pipe and wire mesh. I bet a real dish would do a lot better than what we constructed.
Get a second... (Score:4, Interesting)
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
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Radio Astronomy (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_astronomy [wikipedia.org]
http://www.nrao.edu/index.php/learn/radioastronomy [nrao.edu]
http://www.radio-astronomy.net/ [radio-astronomy.net]
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Now to be fair the software end of the project was intense to say the least but the pay off was huge.
Setup of software or actually coding it from scratch?
If from scratch that seems like if you/they haven't done so already that would be the perfect type of thing to release as open source. You've already put in the work so it doesn't cost you anything, and the goal was to have functional software, not to sell it.
If that's the case the worst case scenario you release the code and nobody does anything with it. Best case other people get it, improve it, and your radio array reaps the benefits of it.
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Also due to the tight constraints I would love go back and now edit the code to actually make it look good, I'm sure it's a mess. I haven't looked at it in over a year now but it's still kicking it.
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get some bean dip (Score:5, Funny)
and some giant fritos...
Solar furnace? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Since most pools already receive substantially more solar radiation than a 3 meter circle, I don't think they will have to worry too much. Now the cat might get blinded, but would have to be really stupid to not run when you get within 5 foot or so with a giant reflective dish.
It may still have LNA attached (Score:5, Informative)
Solar Concentrator & Generator (Score:2, Interesting)
Not sure you will get much TV these days (Score:2)
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)
Solar concentrator (Score:4, Interesting)
Lyngsat & Azbox HD (Score:2, Informative)
World's biggest... (Score:2)
Bird bath
Look for alien chicks (Score:2)
Start a private setchicks@thefarm project Get inspiration here [berkeley.edu]. 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 [amazon.com], and remember size doesn't matter!
Free transmissions (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Free transmissions (Score:5, Interesting)
Also try dishpointer.com, you use google maps to locate your property and it shows your lat/long and the elevation required for the sat, it also works out how high obstacles can be at a given distance.
Re:Free transmissions (Score:4, Interesting)
FTA is alive (Score:5, Informative)
Alien signals from space (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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Use it for what it is... great dish (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Have Fun with the neighbors (Score:5, Funny)
Point the dish at your nearest neighbors house to make them paranoid.
Re:Have Fun with the neighbors (Score:4, Funny)
And then, while they're out in the yard, you come out in some sort of hazard suit and, within earshot, speak into your cellphone, "Alright honey, switch it on...Ok, there, Perfect! It's fully operational!"
Re:Have Fun with the neighbors (Score:4, Interesting)
Sound Mirror (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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So may I suggest using the dish for a bit of covert surveillance of neighbours.
I don't think having a 3M dish pointed directly at your neighbours could be classified as "covert"
Re:Sound Mirror (Score:5, Funny)
then paint...
" I'M NOT LISTENING TO YOU!"
on the dish.
That will throw them off.
Solar generator (Score:2)
Ricks Satellite Wildfeed and Backhaul Forum (Score:4, Informative)
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 [gofastmotorsports.com]
and check out all the HD feeds you can watch.
http://rickcaylor.websitetoolbox.com/ [websitetoolbox.com]
Satelliteguys is another good website but their wild feeds subforums is invitation only
http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-air-fta-discussion/ [satelliteguys.us]
Audio Eavesdropping (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
DIY Radio Telescope (Score:5, Informative)
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/ [instructables.com]
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 [radioastro...pplies.com]
It could be an interesting project.
Bird bath (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Two words (Score:2)
GIANT PAELLA [google.co.uk]
Play Ben Franklin (Score:2)
lyngsat (Score:2)
http://www.lyngsat.com/ [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 satelli
Make a solar concentrator (Score:2)
Make a huge solar concentrator / death ray [cockeyed.com] with it
It's called FTA.... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Have fun with it... (Score:2)
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.
Forgot a good one.... (Score:2)
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.
One very large tinfoil hat (Score:2)
Hint. Don't stand on your head wearing it when the sun's out.
Sex... (Score:2)
Hot Tub (Score:2)
'Nuff said
Have a party (Score:2)
A 10 foot wok can fry a lot of chinese food.
Idea (Score:2, Interesting)
Worlds biggest stir-fry?
BUD (Big Ugly Dish) (Score:2)
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
Wireless freeloading (Score:2)
Free to Air C Band? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Junk. Seriously. (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Use it for assertiveness (Score:3, Funny)
Protest! (Score:4, Informative)
Protest HBO's rates by interfering with their signal!
$12.95/MONTH? NO WAY !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._MacDougall [wikipedia.org]
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You'll need a bigger dish to post first.
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Re:Astronomy? (Score:5, Informative)
Line with tinfoil. Hang a grill over the focal point. Point at sun.
Cook sun-dried beef jerky.
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It's a bit more than "dried".
a 10 feet dish covered in reflective material will cause anything held at the focus to spontaneously burst into flames in a second.
Re:Astronomy? (Score:5, Insightful)
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no, just would fail to meet the "sun dried" portion.
~=s/sun dried/immolated/ig
while you should be able to pick up "backbone" news feeds and such (equipment will cost ~$1000 I think), I would look into a down converter and other RF gear and make a radio telescope. With today's PC power you won't need expensive computational gear for visualizations of the RF data or FFTs, so I think ~10 grand should get enough gear for a fairly nice astronomy setup. As a bonus you'll still be able to tune in those TV feeds
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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 y
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Re:Astronomy? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't get it. How would a 10' dish help him achieve first posts? And why bother?
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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."