I just received a Neusat SP6000 from a forum member here (thanks squid!!), which is by far the most advanced receiver I have used (seriously thanks a ton for this opportunity squid
) and it has blind scan. Well, it didn't have Galaxy 19 in the list (or any other names that Galaxy 19 used to be called), so I made a satellite named Galaxy 19.
I then went to blind scan (or blind search as its called here) and there were a few options (vertical/horizontal,etc) and I let it scan. To my surprise it found about 260 channels. My question is...HOW? There was no identifying information about Galaxy 19 at ALL. Does it just see what signal it receives and then adds it?
Sorry about these silly questions...i'm an extreme newbie and i'm a little amazed, haha.
Don't worry about the so - called "silly" questions. You are not going to learn this stuff without asking and there is no such thing as a "silly question". Well, maybe there is, but you haven't asked that one yet.
Blind Scan is the topic. What is "BLIND SCAN"?
Basically, you drive your dish or point your dish so that you detect a signal from space. Your satellite receiver (your IRD) has no clue what satellite this is and it don't care. You may not even know what it is, but you probably have a better idea than your IRD! And you are LOST! (that's not personal, just a setup for the next step) So, you are out in the yard or up on your roof and moving your dish this way and that and BANG! Your signal meter pegs out! Do you know what sat you are pointed at? NO! You are BLIND. You know you have a signal, but you are not sure what the signal is. So you go to your IRD and perform a BLIND SCAN. The IRD is just as lost and as blind as you are at this time. It knows even less than you.
So, you tell it to BLIND SCAN the signal that you found. It doesn't tell you that you are wrong or right, it only scans the signals that it detects. If your IRD was setup to look for 97W and you landed on 101W, it doesn't know the difference. So it scans in all these channels and logs them as being on sat 97W. WRONG But, the IRD did exactly what you told it to do.
This is a BLIND SCAN. The IRD does not care where the dish is pointed to or what satellite has been selected in the menu, it just scans for all valid signals and drops what it finds in the folder that is open at the time.
Technically, the IRD is just looking for an electrical current reading from the IF section of the receiver. If the signal level is strong, it logs it, blindly or irrelevant to the satellite that is selected. It doesn't care about the name of the sat nor whether it is right or wrong. It found a good signal and it will record it on the satellite that is open in the menu. That is why it is called a BLIND SCAN. It doesn't know or care what sat it is searching, it just knows to look for valid signals.
I could blindfold you, walk you around in circles in my home til you were a bit dizzy and then tell you to open every drawer and pull out every 9V battery you find to test. You would probably check each battery with your tongue first, just to see if that battery even stood a chance. You would toss all the really dead ones and want to check those that seemed possibly good with a meter. But, being blindfolded, would you ever really know what room those batteries came from unless I told you? No. You would have to believe that you were in the kitchen if I told you so or in the backroom or this bedroom or that one. Unless you could smell my chili cooking in the kitchen. LOL
Anyway, if I point you into a room with a blindfold on (or point the dish at a sat) and you don't know where you are, you could still detect the signals and log them in, but you wouldn't be sure of where they were truly from.
RADAR
