Recent content by NewsTruck

Yeah, but if you look at it on a spectrum monitor, it's not that bad. Unless you were to have some uplink run amok and either drift in frequency or suddenly start shooting out hundreds of watts, overpowering everyone else... I'm sure there are horror stories, just like in every other operation...

1) Like I said, it has 10 memory locations, so for my 10 most-used channels, I don't have to enter those manually. The unit is mostly designed to be controlled by a computer; it generates it's own web pages, and a full IP interface, so it can connect to a web browser. The encoders do, too...

There is a guide for satellite transponders, printed monthly, called the "Keystone Communications North American Satellite Guide", but it goes for $235.00/year. It really has much less information than Lyngsat, but it does do what you asked for -- deal with the satellites at the transponder...

36 is by far the most common; DISH (Echostar) uses 30; some are wider (SBS-6 was 43 MHz). Most were originally designed to carry 1 analog FM video channel at contribution quality, which takes 36 MHz. The fact that we now subdivide them into channels is a relatively recent practice. A good...

First, don't confuse transponder with channel. A transponder is a physical device with a specific width. Think of how wide a big highway is. You can see the actual TRANSPONDER frequencies at (click) Ku-band. How they get subdivided is up to the customer, just like painting lanes on a highway...

Not sure I understand the question... The transponders are all wide enough to handle six individual 4.232 streams (actually nearly 6Mb/sec mpeg video per each). So we just subdivide them just like a real estate developer would, into 17A, 17B, 17C, 17D, 17E, and 17F. Hard to believe, but they...

Truck dishes are at least 1.8m; usually the receive site dishes are also fixed uplinks which are in the 6m range.

SCPC audio. see Pacifica Network Uplink Page There are also a variety of other data transmissions on the other horizontal transponders.

They're not "reduced", we just don't cranked 'em up to full volume. AMC9 is actually slightly LOWER in gain than AMC1, and requires almost twice the power for the same signal level. (About 20 watts vs. 7-9 watts for AMC-1.) They actually should come in about the same. -John

Interesting. Obviously whatever was on 17B was running way too high. Looking at that, it would have been very hard to receive 17A. I'm sure it was just like that for a short while. -John

Great Questions. There are two scenarios: We operate more than 100 fixed uplinks (at TV stations) around the country. They are all interconnected to a central control computer in Florida which, at a scheduled time, selects which uplink goes up and on what transponder and channel. Bookings...

Correct; it's a 1765A.

AMC-1 is fine -- and not old at all. We only run the news feeds at about 25% power, because they are all received on big dishes. It saves the batteries and cuts down on interference. I have occasionally seen one of the transponders (accidentally) run at full power, and it's quite spectacular...

Well here's mine on a typical night. Upper left is the picture going up, Upper right is the picture coming back, lower left is the spectrum monitor on AMC-1 21 and 23; 21 has A/B/C/D/E lit up, 23 has B/C/D/E/F lit up. As you can see, 21E is a lot stronger than 21 C and D. But we're doing a...

Do any of you have spectrum monitors? (if you can find one on Ebay....) it's quite impressive on an election night. Since AMC-9 horizontal is usually empty, it gets full with every odd numbered transponder put into service. The hardest workers are at the control center in Florida who have to...