Quote:
Originally Posted by
Tron 
Exactly why I primarily refer to birds by orbital position 
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It is interesting, from a historic and, perhaps, formal point of view to know which spacecraft is where (and which was where in the past). However, for everyday aiming and reference purposes, orbital position is all you need.
I concur! the names change as often as I change my socks... that doesn't mean I don't change my socks often either, lol
Names get confusing with each receiver as well, one has a different (old) name while another has an updated sat list but the orbital slots don't change so I practice using only numbers, not names!!!
I don't agree. Just giving a longitude doesn't communicate enough info, however in many cases neither does the name, so sometimes you need both. Practically every day, I see posts just referencing a longitude, but have no indication of what sat, or what band, or what mode, and the posters expect people to somehow know what they're talking about.
For example, if I post that there are dozens of FTA music channels on 101 and 125, or post that there are FTA music channels on 105, or post that there is a DVB-S2 IP/DVB signal sending UDP data on 83 (all of which are true), you wouldn't know where to look for them, ie whether C-band, Ku, DBS. In 3 of these 4 examples, the sat name would have been all I needed to know. In other cases neither the name or the longitude gives all the necessary info, so you need to provide more info, like band and/or mode, but just giving the longitude often isn't enough.
My personal opinion is that the people who seem to want to use longitudes only are people who have motorized Ku dishes that you can just send to a longitude via USALS. Giving a longitude to most people with a BUD doesn't help them, because there is no way to relate a longitude to a position on any BUD I've seen, whereas most 2 digit sat names on BUDs at least give you a pretty good idea of what sat position you're talking about.
Basically, I see no reason why, if someone is serious about a hobby like this, that they can't learn both the longitudes AND the names of the sats, and I don't see why people can't include what band they're referring to when you post.
That being said, I DO agree, that longitudes would be better than those darn 4DTV names that 4DTV owners post. Those things make it next to impossible for anyone who doesn't own a 4DTV to interpret. But the bottom line is that regardless of what method you prefer to describe the sats, make sure that you give adequate information for the reader to know which sat, which band you're talking about. You can save people a lot of time, and you can avoid people just ignoring your post because you didn't give complete info. In general, I've observed that the people who talk in longitudes are the more likely to not give complete info, perhaps not as bad as 4DTV owners though. Basically, if someone gives complete info, then I don't care whether you use names or numbers.
Just my opinion. And on MY receivers, C3 will always be at 131, but I have no problems with someone saying that they found a signal on C3 at 79. I'm going to have to pull out my EQX program to know when to search.
