First FTA receiver?

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Viewsat Ultra and i loved it....i still use it occassionally, and ALWAYS use it to aim dishes....the menus/displays and guides are very user friendly and look great....adding TPs and satellites is very simple, USALS and motor controls work great and it has a decent blind scan with "step" selection/control....i also find the signal and quality meters are the most accurate out of any other receiver i have used....i realize this receiver was made for "other" purposes but i honestly think it is one of the best quality DVB-S receivers out there....
 
My father picked up a Manhatten 1000 from Skyvision around '02 to go with the $50 12' used C-Band setup I put in for him around '98. I struggled for a long time trying to get OLN for him for some reason, as that was the only reason he bought it. Hundreds of other channels came in fine. While there was a digital learning curve, it was so much easier to know where you were in the sky with analog signals on every bird. The Manhatten DID have built in polarotor control, though we never used it; the Drake IRD handled that. I miss the analog days....

After he moved, I used it with my C-Band system until a lightning strike took it out. Replaced by a Coolsat 6k, oh the luxury of blind scan!
 
the first receiver that caught my attention ( and got me thinking of DVB / scanning was a Smallear maybe ST6600) it was one you have to program and i think held 99 transponders and i thought the learning curve was too high (no blind scan) . This was back in the c-band wild feeds days and the boss would allow me doing that but probably venture to far into never never land going to scanning elswhere as the big dish was our primary means of tv reception ( being way out in the boonies).

the first one i owned was a coolsat 5000 and i still have it.
 
Viewsat Xtreme, and let me say my infatuation with belonging to the eye patch crowd was an illustration of my human faults in play.

Still in that questionably legal frame of mind, I went with Viewsat Ultra, Sonicview HD and Viewsat 9000 HD. That was when I was on the high seas trying to recapture the Black Pearl from Barbarossa.

None of those receivers are now working, although if I ever get around to troubleshooting my one meter dish, the Sonicview will be used for that. But with my Birdview having a dual ortho I get so much c and KU tv that fixing it up for circular gets put off.
 
My first receiver was a black Coolsat 4000 Pro purchased (I think) in 2005. I bought it from a local electronics surplus store that had one on display aimed at the FTA on 123 West at the time. I didn't know much about FTA at the time. I bought a package with a DSR2076 dish, SG2100 mover and a single linear LNB and I still am using the dish and mover today. What a challenge to aim the dish for the very first time with a mover for me. Thank goodness 121 West had a card in the clear at the time. I really enjoyed all the FTA on 123 West for a while. The receiver has developed intermittant video out so I have it in storage for spare parts since I still have some other Coolsats I use for scanning and aiming. What a great hobby!
 
my first free to air receiver was a c-band chaparel some where around 1984 before they started scrambling anything.
My first digital receiver was a blackbird.
I don't own neither one of them anymore.:)
 
CoolSat 4000
I don't still have it, I sold it when I thought the Pansat 3500 was going to be the hot ticket with my mini-bud
I currently still have a CoolSat 6000 that only gets used for NASA once and a while (it's been a while).
 
Pansat 100A bought from Mike Kohl. First day of owning it I received ONN at 37.5W with a low quality signal as one of the first signals I saw that day. This would be the Friday before Mother's Day in 1998.
Still have it, but haven't used it regularly since it was replaced by the Pansat 200A a year later. Haven't hooked it up to try it in years...

Actually, I still have all the satellite receivers I ever bought. Can't bear to throw out good electronics that I might need someday.:D
 
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