New Canada satellite bird launch

[N5XZS]

I saw something on the national news saying the new Canada's satellite was launched today. Hoping it would be a new FSS Ku band bird!

 

[Brct203]

Actually, it might be...

It seems they were talking of Telesat's Telstar 19 Vantage, to be stationed at 63W, with a variety of Ku and Ka beams.

From what I can read, the North Atlantic beam should be easily receivable in the Eastern third of the US, and will be using the spectrum between 11450 and 12200 MHz. Unfortunately for you, it does not seem that it covers any of NM.

This said, I'm not holding my breath for any FTA TV signal there... All i've see so far on 63W was encrypted...

 

[harshness]

It seems they were talking of Telesat's Telstar 19 Vantage, to be stationed at 63W, with a variety of Ku and Ka beams.

How could the bird be associated with Canada if you can't reasonably see it from most of Canada?

Looking at the Telesat web page for the satellite, it will be using its Ka band for broadband in Northern Canada and South America and the Ku band will be used for Broadband in Brazil. I wouldn't expect any linear TV programming.

It was splattered all over the news because it is the heaviest (15,600lbs) communications satellite to date.

 

[Brct203]

How could the bird be associated with Canada if you can't reasonably see it from most of Canada?

I guess it's about ownership and not about areas of coverage

There are many satellite operators that have satellite well away from their base country (Eutelsat at 113, 115 and 117, SES from 101W to 129W, etc), usualy as a result of past mergers.

 

[harshness]

In any event, it appears that blind scanning Telesat's portion of the Ku band (if it reaches this far North) would be fruitless.

 

[skysurfer]

How could the bird be associated with Canada if you can't reasonably see it from most of Canada?

Being in the Vantage series, I'd expect it to be used for broadband (not television/radio) so Telesat probably saw a need for some parts of their country and for aircraft over the Atlantic and some needs in South America and built a satellite with spots to those regions to serve those customers where more broadband capacity is needed.

EDIT: I find scanning broadband sats pretty fruitless. Not only is it data (not video or audio), you just see whatever activity is in your spot beam of that satellite and not a satellite crammed full of data carriers like you'd expect if the satellite were wide-beam coverage and not just spots.