Galaxy 16 Ku ?
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I have been working on 99W for the past week. I have been able to get CBS Newspath and the PowerVu channels such as ESPN, E etc. Other than that there is not too much. - But I was on it two days ago.
I haven't tried it today, however, so maybe there is an issue.
I haven't tried it today, however, so maybe there is an issue.
Yep, it's the PowerVu channels that have gone AWOL. Everything else is the same. Checked Lyngsat and they are still listing them. Give an update if you try for them today. THANKS!
Yes, but sometimes they are viewable. You never know. Just have to keep scanning the skies.
I am not sure if he was worried about not being able to view them, more than just not picking them up and wondering if his dish go tweaked or something.
Arrr, thar they be!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Gosh dang ya just gotta luv this forum!
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Now that the OP issues have been addressed, I'm curious whether anyone with a spectrum analyzer notices anything unusual about this satellite, particularly on the vertical side?
After reading this thread yesterday, I tried to scan it with my slow scan Broadlogic scan thingy. The horizontal side looked OK, but the vertical side looks really weird. The spectrum has dozens of extremely narrow (like 1 MHz wide or less) signals all through it. The signals are so narrow that I assumed that they MUST be birdies in my system, but I eliminated the normal causes of those things, and they're still there, plus no narrow peaks at all on the horizontal side.
It's possible that I'm picking up some kind of TI or something, possibly coming from the power companies transformer. However, I moved the dish one slot west, and everything looked normal on both polarities.
Anyone else seeing any strange narrow signals on the vertical side????
After reading this thread yesterday, I tried to scan it with my slow scan Broadlogic scan thingy. The horizontal side looked OK, but the vertical side looks really weird. The spectrum has dozens of extremely narrow (like 1 MHz wide or less) signals all through it. The signals are so narrow that I assumed that they MUST be birdies in my system, but I eliminated the normal causes of those things, and they're still there, plus no narrow peaks at all on the horizontal side.
It's possible that I'm picking up some kind of TI or something, possibly coming from the power companies transformer. However, I moved the dish one slot west, and everything looked normal on both polarities.
Anyone else seeing any strange narrow signals on the vertical side????
I thought the V side had a bunch of transponders for feeds that have s/r of 3978
I know when they were on 93W before it had failure issues, the vertical side would light up when you blind scanned
I know when they were on 93W before it had failure issues, the vertical side would light up when you blind scanned
These were not as wide as a 3978 news feed. I guess it couldn't have been from the sat. I must be getting some strange TI from the power transformer or something. Really weird. I'd believe that the birdies were coming from my equipment, but why only on that one sat, and only on the vertical side. And I was still receiving channels like the CBS newspath thing, etc.
I think tomorrow I'll try direct into my Broadlogic, bypassing the switch and Diamond.
I'm confused.
How's your signal strength bj? Problems with G16ku led me to figure out that I wasn't getting all the channels on that sat a week or so ago. Then I found I wasn't tracking the arc as well as I thought, a little twist of the motor, to the west, fixed that sat, and brought signal strength up on just about all the other sats too. Of course, it could be some kind of TI or something.
What you described sounds like internet broadband signals. When I worked for AT&T and had to troubleshoot outages, internet would look like that on an analyzer.
Did some research on AMC3 and found this:
'AMC-3's Ku-band transponders serve the education, broadcast, business television and broadband Internet markets.'
'broadband Internet markets'
Well, I did a bit of experimentation this morning, and my narrow signals are definately NOT coming from the satellite. I aimed my BUD at the sat, and although my BUD is so warped that it doesn't work well on Ku, I got a reasonable spectrum for the vertical side of G16. See the first image.
In the first image, I've labeled the 14321 SR CBS Newspath station as "A", I labeled a couple of the 3978 SNG signals at "B", and it looks like there are a couple more to the right of the 14321 peak. Also labeled one of those wide 30,000SR Hughesnet type internet transponders at "C". Although this isn't the cleanest of scans, it's somewhat typical, showing the widths of various SR transponders.
In the 2nd image, you can see what I was (and still am) getting on G16V with my Fortec dish, and Invacom lnbf. You can see that the whole spectrum is just covered with interferrence from very narrow peaks. These peaks are NOT visible in the scan of the horizontal side, and are not visible if I move the dish over to the next sat on either polarity. It's just on G16 on the vertical side.
Anyway, I went outside and checked out what the dish was aiming at, and sure enough, it's looking straight at my power pole, which has a high voltage transformer on top. So I'm guessing that the power pole is putting out some strange noise that extends all the way into the Ku band somehow.
Anyway, it wasn't coming from the sat.
BTW, both spectra show a significant drop off in signal at the high end of the band. This is due to the fact that both went through a bad port on my DiseqC switch. The other ports aren't quite that bad, although they still lose some high end signal due to my long cable run.
In the first image, I've labeled the 14321 SR CBS Newspath station as "A", I labeled a couple of the 3978 SNG signals at "B", and it looks like there are a couple more to the right of the 14321 peak. Also labeled one of those wide 30,000SR Hughesnet type internet transponders at "C". Although this isn't the cleanest of scans, it's somewhat typical, showing the widths of various SR transponders.
In the 2nd image, you can see what I was (and still am) getting on G16V with my Fortec dish, and Invacom lnbf. You can see that the whole spectrum is just covered with interferrence from very narrow peaks. These peaks are NOT visible in the scan of the horizontal side, and are not visible if I move the dish over to the next sat on either polarity. It's just on G16 on the vertical side.
Anyway, I went outside and checked out what the dish was aiming at, and sure enough, it's looking straight at my power pole, which has a high voltage transformer on top. So I'm guessing that the power pole is putting out some strange noise that extends all the way into the Ku band somehow.
Anyway, it wasn't coming from the sat.
BTW, both spectra show a significant drop off in signal at the high end of the band. This is due to the fact that both went through a bad port on my DiseqC switch. The other ports aren't quite that bad, although they still lose some high end signal due to my long cable run.
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Sounds like you solved the mystery!! Reminds me of the time I was running a beacon station (WT8D) on Hilton Head Island. Every evening I would shut off the beacon and work some ham stations. I kept picking up this exotic signal and trying to work it. The Morse code was intermittent and weak but I could make out some words. Maybe it was someone on a boat or shipwrecked trying to call for help. Long story short, the signal stopped when my old fridge finally blew up.
WT8D
[ame=http://www.google.com/search?q=wt8d+beacon&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&client=firefox-a]wt8d beacon - Google Search[/ame]
WT8D
[ame=http://www.google.com/search?q=wt8d+beacon&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US
fficial&client=firefox-a]wt8d beacon - Google Search[/ame]
Sounds like you solved the mystery!! Reminds me of the time I was running a beacon station (WT8D) on Hilton Head Island. Every evening I would shut off the beacon and work some ham stations. I kept picking up this exotic signal and trying to work it. The Morse code was intermittent and weak but I could make out some words. Maybe it was someone on a boat or shipwrecked trying to call for help. Long story short, the signal stopped when my old fridge finally blew up.
...
Other than TVRO, my main hobby is listening to military aircraft on my scanners, so that I'll know when they're going to fly over my house. So I monitor several freqs up in the 200-400MHz range. One late winter, my scanner stopped on a signal that was pretty much dead air, except that you could hear birds chirping. After a few minutes the signal went away. Next day, about the same time, the same thing happened. Only when it happened the third day in a row, did it finally dawned on me what it was. A month or so earlier, I had received a XMAS gift, which was a gadget that you hang near your bird feeders, and it transmitted bird sounds to an FM radio. This never worked very well at all, so I really never used it, and forgot that I had it outside. Well apparently, it transmitted harmonics up in the milair band, and the frequency stability of the transmitter was very poor, such that as the temperature changed, the freq would drift quite a bit, and pass through one of the freqs I was monitoring, but only be there for a couple minutes. Anyway, I thought it was funny that I was picking up chickadees on the milair band.
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