Prepare to Rename Your Satellites

[B.J.]

It's more confusing when your dish mover is a 4DTV. You have to deal with old name, new name, sat position and 4DTV name. If you are not a drinker this will make you one.:

I feel sorry for the 4DTV users, who have to put up with that, but I also feel sorry for the rest of us who have to try to interpret the 4DTV language.
GI/Motorola has taken the major set of the old TVRO community, who were proud of knowing the ins and outs of the hobby, and decided to dumb them down to a mentality similar to the DTV/DN users. It's sad, but I guess it the way all phases of business operate these days.
Abstract sat names is nothing new to TVRO'ers, what with most old receivers only being able to accomodate 2 key names, like G5, F3, S2, etc, however they old manufacturers didn't try to indoctrinate users into thinking that these were the actual accepted names of these sats.
I used to get annoyed by all the changes in sat names, and refused to accept the new ones until I saw NASA, and later Space Command refer to the sats by the new names. NASA generally didn't update their database, but Space Command (now [SIZE=-2]US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM))[/SIZE]is pretty quick to change, so I've given in and try to use the new names when possible. I guess the government organization responsible for tracking the sats has been changing as fast as the sat names. But that's the government for you. I worked for the federal gov for over 12 years, in the same building for all but the first year, and I think the name of the organization I was in changed like 8 times in those 12 years, and has changed another 3 or 4 times since I left. When I left, I moved to Maine, and it took me a couple years to learn the names of all the roads in town, then the State told us that we had to change the names of over half the road names in town.
Back to the original point, maybe all this change is why I HAVE become a drinker, as you say.

 

[Mr Tony]

Agree with you there. Maybe we can get one of these fine men at SatelliteGuys to do a list of name changes that has the old satellite name(s) and the new ones once they rename them.

you mean this list?
http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-air-fta-discussion/71402-what-satellite-where.html

 

[B.J.]

Since the links above don't differentiate between sats that changed names, and sats that replaced old sats, I made a new chart.

http://www.eskerridge.com/bj/sat/tvrosat4.htm

This chart lists the current CONUS sats, and shows older names that these sats had. Use the other links to see what sats they replaced.

This, and the other link I posted were created from excel sheets, and can be converted back to excel sheets (at least it works for me) if you want to correct them for future changes.

I keep a version of the most recent sheet with actuator (actually H-H) counts, so that I can approximate where to find sats with my BUD.

 

[Mr Tony]

BJ
one correction

89W was
Galaxy 28 (current)
IA8 (previous name)


then T4 before it blew up
it was never G27 (that is the one at 129 when Galaxy bought IA)

 

[PopcornNMore]

Since the links above don't differentiate between sats that changed names, and sats that replaced old sats, I made a new chart.

http://www.eskerridge.com/bj/sat/tvrosat4.htm

This chart lists the current CONUS sats, and shows older names that these sats had. Use the other links to see what sats they replaced.

This, and the other link I posted were created from excel sheets, and can be converted back to excel sheets (at least it works for me) if you want to correct them for future changes.

I keep a version of the most recent sheet with actuator (actually H-H) counts, so that I can approximate where to find sats with my BUD.

Very nice chart! Thank you BJ.

 

[B.J.]

BJ
one correction

89W was
Galaxy 28 (current)
IA8 (previous name)


then T4 before it blew up
it was never G27 (that is the one at 129 when Galaxy bought IA)

I knew that was coming.

Yeah, you're probably right, however I got this straight from SpaceTrack. They have a search function to retrieve all the various names that a sat has had in their database over the years. It's probably a typo from when the sat names were submitted to them, but it looked real, so I included it. The actual listing showed GALAXY 27 (IA 8) in Feb of 2007 folowed by the current listing of GALAXY 28 (IA 8), but they didn't give a date for when the current listing started.
It's probably just a typo though, but possibly Intelsat had a change of mind relative to what to call things? I sure don't remember this however. I guess it wouldn't be the first time that the DOD made a mistake.

The Spacetrack listings were sometimes interesting, since when sats like that are launched, and they first start tracking them, they sometimes don't know which object is the real sat, and which is rocket boosters, etc, so for several of the sats, some of the sat names were things like "unknown", "Object A", etc, prior to them positively identifying the sat. I remember a couple HAM sats went up years ago, and the HAMs got the keps, and for a while were following the wrong sat. Even NASA OIG, that tracked them at that time had them reversed for a while.