AMC-1 Radio Channels?

[jcourt]

I would like to know if anyone has found these radio channels on AMC-1:

Air-1 Radio

American Family Radio

K-Love Radio

God's Country Radio


I have only found information about them at:


Free to Air MPEG Channel Guide

 

[AcWxRadar]

I would like to know if anyone has found these radio channels on AMC-1:

Hello Jcourt,

I have found two of them.

I was able to find:

American Family Radio on TP 11.813 V SR 2.170 MS/s. The VPID is 65535, the APID is 0056 and the PPID is 8191.

God's Country Radio is on TP 11.804 V SR 3.499 MS/s. The VPID is 65535, the APID is 0036 and the PPID is 0045.
http://www.godscountryradionetwork.com/about.html

Curious, what does the VPID really mean for an audio channel? Never figured that out.

Radar

 

[Davage]

I can't remember. Is AMC1 the bird that has the wonky skew? I recall something about the skew being different by 25 or 30 degrees compared to the other birds in the sky.. It might involve some adjusting of the LNB to receive.

 

[AcWxRadar]

JCourt,

Thanks for asking about these channels. I find that I like God's Country Radio very much.

You can also access it via the internet through the link I put in my last post. I can hear the same thing that is on the satellite as they put on the internet. It is rather funny though, what came across the internet is delayed about 3-5 minutes after what you hear on the satellite feed.

Radar

 

[AcWxRadar]

I can't remember. Is AMC1 the bird that has the wonky skew? I recall something about the skew being different by 25 or 30 degrees compared to the other birds in the sky.. It might involve some adjusting of the LNB to receive.

Davage,

I don't think so. I don't find anything peculiar about the skew of the LNB for this satellite, at least not on the Ku side. I have a Winegard DS-2076 dish (which is an offset dish) on a motor, so my skew (polarity) is set at zero degrees for all sats and the rotation of the motor and the bend in the motor tube automatically compensates for the polarity.

I have attempted to improve the signal level on a few video channels on a couple of satellites by adjusting the LNBF polarity, but it didn't really do anything, so I figure most Ku band birds are set quite correctly. Never had any reason to test this on this satellite, though. The signal was always good.

Radar

 

[Wescopc]

I can't remember. Is AMC1 the bird that has the wonky skew? I recall something about the skew being different by 25 or 30 degrees compared to the other birds in the sky.. It might involve some adjusting of the LNB to receive.

AMC1 Skew IS the one that is off on the KU side see post #3 here:
http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-air-fta-discussion/160689-ku-skew.html
Bob

 

[AcWxRadar]

AMC1 Skew IS the one that is off on the KU side see post #3 here:
http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-air-fta-discussion/160689-ku-skew.html
Bob

Wescopc,

Something is not right with that notion regarding the skew. The Ku band side of 103 AMC 1 is just fine. Maybe there was some oddball problem once and I missed it, but it was good before then and it is correct now. So, whatever problem others may have exposed then has been corrected.

Radar

 

[jcourt]

Thanks for the input. I am ready to get into the FTA hobby and am trying to see what my options are for channels. I check Lyngsat often, but have found a few channels not listed there, such as these. The Skyvision list for AMC-1 12145 V 20000 says: Note: Other audio found on this transponder (Manual PID only). Any ideas what these channels are? Radio channels are what I am looking for with FTA, will a 36" dish work to receive these channels?

 

[B.J.]

Wescopc,

Something is not right with that notion regarding the skew. The Ku band side of 103 AMC 1 is just fine. Maybe there was some oddball problem once and I missed it, but it was good before then and it is correct now. So, whatever problem others may have exposed then has been corrected.

Radar

The polarity has been off on AMC1-Ku ever since it was launched, as GE-1, and as far as I can see, it's still off.
According to the AMC web page at:

SES AMERICOM - AMC-1

it is still off. They say it's off by 26 deg. It doesn't look quite that far off via my dish, but it is definately off by quite a bit.

From what I've read, it isn't a "problem" but something they did intentionally.

Anyway, why is it that you say the something is not right? Ie are you showing the polarity normal on your dishes when you adjust it, or is it just that channels are tuning in OK without adjusting it? If the latter, yeah, most of them tune in OK for me too even on my 90CM, on which I can't fine tune it, however on the bud, where I can fine tune it, I get much better results if I adjust the skew, and that's the only sat where that is true.

 

[Diamond Jim]

I've never had any problems with it. I listen to WCPE and watch the ION channels everyday.

 

[B.J.]

I've never had any problems with it. I listen to WCPE and watch the ION channels everyday.

I think you're talking about C-band, at least for the ION... I guess the other may be Ku. The comment above refers to Ku band.
When I use my 90 CM with it's invacom quad, I can get most of the transponders on ku even though it's at normal H/V orientation, but with my BUD, which is adjustable with a polarotor, all the other Ku sats register about -55 to -60 for Vertical, but AMC1 tunes in best around -80 or so (numbers relate roughly to degrees). So I'm showing somewhere in the 20-25 deg range for the offset on Ku, which is pretty close to the 26 deg offset listed in the sat's specs. If I use normal polarity with my BUD, I completely lose lock on most transponders.
The C-band side has normal polarity and isn't offset.

I'm not sure why my 90 CM/Invacom seems to be more forgiving we polarity. Perhaps it's just that my BUD is in pretty bad shape, so the transponders are marginal.

 

[AcWxRadar]

The polarity has been off on AMC1-Ku ever since it was launched, as GE-1, and as far as I can see, it's still off.
According to the AMC web page at:

SES AMERICOM - AMC-1

it is still off. They say it's off by 26 deg. It doesn't look quite that far off via my dish, but it is definately off by quite a bit.

From what I've read, it isn't a "problem" but something they did intentionally.

Anyway, why is it that you say the something is not right? Ie are you showing the polarity normal on your dishes when you adjust it, or is it just that channels are tuning in OK without adjusting it? If the latter, yeah, most of them tune in OK for me too even on my 90CM, on which I can't fine tune it, however on the bud, where I can fine tune it, I get much better results if I adjust the skew, and that's the only sat where that is true.

B.J.

I have never "had" to adjust the polarity on 103. All the channels that Lyngsat states that I should receive, I do. I guess that I have never suspected that there was anything wrong with this bird.

Is there any possibility that I have already compensated for this error? Without knowing that I did? Nawh, that doesn't make any sense.... Now you guys have me scratching my head! This bird is right on my track and I am using a Winegard dish (DS-2076) and a PowerTech DG-280B motor to pan it and I cannot detect any errors in alignment from any satellite regarding polarity.

The only sat that disturbs me is 74.0W Horizons 2. But not regarding signal polarity, but azimuth. It seems to "move" from 74.0 to 74.4 degrees. No other sat on my system does that. Why that one only?

Back to 103W, I don't have any problems with it, so is there some phenomena that is screwing with that sat for some locations and not mine? It isn't logical to me, but something must be at hand here, something that we don't quite understand.

I wish I had some answers, but what is reported and what I have detected does not make sense to me. Some of these things should not be happening.

Sorry to go off on a tangent, but I cannot figure this out and I cannot find any reason for it either, nothing logical anyways.

Can the magnetic field of the earth (small pockets) be responsible?

I do know that there is some magnetic "vortex" where I live. If I take a magnetic compass out in the yard, it swings wildly all over the place. Sometimes, even if I am standing in one location, the needle will move 5-20 degrees off and it wasn't right to begin with.

If 103 is "off" as you state, then is some phenomenon responsible for correcting it at my residence? Please excuse me, but I am truly finding this quite bizarre. 26 degrees offset is quite amazing to me, especailly when I don't detect a problem or any error between 97, 99, 101, 103, 105.... They all match up.

This is kinda annoying in a way, but very fun at the same time. It is a "great investigation" underway!

I don't know how to explain it.

Radar

 

[FTABman0]

Curious, what does the VPID really mean for an audio channel? Never figured that out.
Radar

VPID: Video program identification number, equivalent to the video signal channel.

APID: Audio program identification number, equivalent to the audio channel. By using same VPID on different APID, same channel can have different sound track.

Source

 

[Mr Tony]

The KU side of AMC1 is off by 25-26 degrees. So for me in Minneapolis to get "optimum" signal on there I have to skew the LNB as if I was on SBS6/H2. The C-Band side is fine. As noted above, it is that way and we have had been that way since day 1.

I remember an uplinker telling us that...let me find it
edit: found it

It was a launch/positioning anomaly. When it achieved permanent orbit, it was tilted by -- whatever it is -- 20 or so degrees.

There are now hundreds of uplinks that are permanently skewed "off" to compensate for it, so it'll NEVER change. So I have to manually rotate and manually cross-pole each time I go up.

http://www.satelliteguys.us/1047803-post17.html

Some of the stronger signals work fine even with the "offset" offset (ie: the skew being what would be considered normal) but the news feeds you have to skew the LNB differently to get them all...mainly because they run at lower power to begin with so
lower power + skew messed up on dish = no or little quality

 

[Diamond Jim]

WCPE is Ku, ION C band.

 

[B.J.]

I just did a spectrum scan of AMC1 Ku with both my 90 CM with the normal skew, and my BUD, with the proper skew, and I can definately see 11840 and 11880 in the vertical scan with my 90 CM, but I can barely see a trace of it with the BUD. It seems to me, that knowing that there is a skew issue, that they have avoided having horizontal signals where they will interfere with the vertical signals.... except for the news feed things, as Ice said. Ie the main high SR vertical 24/7 feeds are at the upper end of the band, and the main high SR horizontal 24/7 feeds are at the low end of the band, ie there doesn't seem to be anything to interfere with the big feeds. However there seem to be narrow band feeds everywhere else on the sat, so you need to be tuned in for polarity if there is interferrence, but those things are so narrow, the the odds of there being narrow band things showingup in the same place is low.
Anyway, I think that we're able to receive these things with the wrong polarity just because we're lucky that there aren't any interferring signals near what we're tuning in, however, I'm guessing that this is by design.

 

[eurosport]

I was going to set up a dish on this bird specifically for Air-1 and K-Love. Both of those are semi-local on FM (Air-1 on 88.5 and K-Love on 95.3) here but I wanted the satellite feeds. If they're not there, though, I'm not doing it. Can anyone confirm or deny their existence? I'm not interested in those other two .

 

[Mr Tony]

yep they are there...just checked...ones in BOLD are active...69 quality on Coolsat with "normal" skew (normal as in on a motor)

11804 V 3500

you have to scroll through the language/audio pids but they are there. Matched them up with global-cm.net list
8191 0036 Audio: 2 God's Country Radio Gospel/Country
8191 0037 Audio: 8 Air-1 Radio Contemporary Christian Music
8191 0038 Audio: 3 K-Love Radio Contemporary Christian Music
8191 0039 Audio: 4 K-Love Radio Contemporary Christian Music
8191 0040 Audio: 6 Air-1 Radio Contemporary Christian Music
8191 0041 Audio: 9 K-Love Radio Contemporary Christian Music
8191 0043 Audio: 5 Air-1 Radio Contemporary Christian Music
8191 0044 Audio: 7 Spare audio channel
8191 0045 Audio: 1 K-Love Radio Contemporary Christian Music

 

[eurosport]

Cool..I see that K-Love is active. Air-1 is my favorite 'cause they play more rock like Flyleaf, Chevelle and P.O.D. but I like K-Love too. Thanks, Iceberg!:up

 

[DiscoLoveGrapes]

Air1 plays Chevelle? They usually sound way too much like KLOVE for my tastes...strange since they're owned by the same people.

I'm 99% sure Refuge Radio is up there....somewhere on Ku. As Christian music goes, it's far more upbeat and diverse -- especially at night.