Do you have a "satellite" in your back yard?

[Davage]

I was looking at some stuff on youtube and came upong this video. It shows an animation of the spy satellite being shot down. The computer graphic they show to represent a satellite looks an awful lot like a C-Band dish or an uplink to me

YouTube - Navy Missile Hits Spy Satellite on First Attempt

 

[qwert1515]

Satellites do not look like that, that was a Satellite dish that the animation showed. (Bad animation)

If you do a Google image search the top row of pictures are what satellite's can look like. Satellite - Google Image Search

EDIT - After re-reading your comment your statement might have been sarcastic (Then yes I do worry that my dishes might get shot down in the near future )

 

[Davage]

Yes, there was lots of sarcasm in the message.

There are still lots of people who say that they bought a satellite, when in fact they've bought a receiving earth station..

I guess the Associated Press doesn't know what a satellite looks like. I actually have a puter pin from Telsat Canada in the shape of Anik E1. I had it given to me many years ago by a Telsat employee. I also have a poster (from Telsat Canada again) of the rocket launch of Anik F1. I'm a bit of a satellite junky, but not to the point where I'd buy a real satellite I'll stick to my dishes...

 

[starman345]

Hehe, I listed a Mercury II receiver in the local sell it/buy it paper and 5 or 6 people called about it....every one of them asked "you have a satellite for sale"? I guess "satellite" kind of covers everything satellite related to a lot of people. Of course they then went on to the "how many movie channels does it get" questions. Geez, I hate that!

 

[Davage]

Hehe, I listed a Mercury II receiver in the local sell it/buy it paper and 5 or 6 people called about it....every one of them asked "you have a satellite for sale"? I guess "satellite" kind of covers everything satellite related to a lot of people. Of course they then went on to the "how many movie channels does it get" questions. Geez, I hate that!

Yes. Lots of people want to buy "satellites" with them free-to-air receivers to get all the movie channels for free. I am anxious for the smartcard swap to start on Bell and Dish so that the real free-to-air hobby can get it's good name back.

Back in the old days of C-Band, everybody seemed to know that if you got a "chip" you could get all of the scrambled channels for free. C-Band got a really bad reputation for years.

Even while out at a restaurant while I'm on the road I often hear people talking about their FTA sets that they've bought and how the 'coders' just release new code after Dish 'scrambles' the signal on them now and again.

Lots of uneducated people have become satellite "experts" it seems these days.

Oh well. 1 year from now, things will look a lot different for the FTA industry after the smartcard swap is complete, or nearing completion.

 

[DirectDishNet]

I love it when my customers ask me where I'm going to put the satellite?......A long time ago, when I worked in N. Carolina I went to this really bad trailer in the middle of no where. Pine trees everywhere, No line of site at all...Pine trees for miles and miles. I tried to explain that the dish has to be pointed to the satellite. He got so mad that there was NLOS. After about 10 minutes of him screaming at me because I was refusing to do the job, he called dish network to complain about me and was demanding that dish move the satellite so he can get TV.

 

[truckracer]

Move the satellite!!! That's funny. "just radio up there and tell ol'billy to drop her in drive and pull forward just a bit" !