Satellite Beacons

[goaliebob99]

Does anyone have a list of satellite beacons in our sky, on each bird, or are they hard to find and document?

 

[skysurfer]

check the satellite operator's website for the satellite(s) of interest. They are usually found there. The beacons are not decodable but you can get the polarity/frequency info that will help you use a spectrum analyzer or scpc analog audio tuner to peak up/confirm the satellite you are on.

 

[qwert1515]

I wish there was an up to date version of this page, unfortunately most of these satellites are no longer around : Beacon Frequencies for Legacy PanAmSat Satellites.


EDIT - I can see the beacons listed for Galaxy 3C with my BLSA.

 

[goaliebob99]

check the satellite operator's website for the satellite(s) of interest. They are usually found there. The beacons are not decodable but you can get the polarity/frequency info that will help you use a spectrum analyzer or scpc analog audio tuner to peak up/confirm the satellite you are on.

Yep I know that, Ill take a look at the links in the morning, but this will tremendously help me in adjusting my arch on the bird, and not from signal itself. If I can adjust from the bird, chances are I will be adjusted more properly for those hard to reach signals. IM also considering going into SNG, (satellite news gatering) and that would also help with transmissions onto the bird. I have a spectrum analyzer that does the C / KU freqs, Now if it could do L band freqs that would be cool also

 

[B.J.]

...... The beacons are not decodable but you can get the polarity/frequency info that will help you use a spectrum analyzer or scpc analog audio tuner to peak up/confirm the satellite you are on.

Unless you have a pretty low drift (ie expensive) lnb, these beacons aren't really useful to most of us for identifying or confirming which sat you're on, because the beacon freqs for the various sats are pretty close to each other, close enough that you can't tell the difference. The lnbs that 98% of us use drift way more than the difference between the various beacons.
I hadn't thought of that when I tried looking for a couple of them, but when I found them at the wrong frequency, it dawned on me that I was seeing lnb drift.

 

[skysurfer]

IM also considering going into SNG, (satellite news gatering) and that would also help with transmissions onto the bird.

a lot of SNG ops use landmarks for satellite location/peaking. Landmarks being those signals that are up 24/7 and can be locked with a DVB receiver (or cheapie consumer DVB box that you can find in some trucks for backup transmission quality monitoring or for the fact they hold many more channels that a lot of commercial DVB receivers so one could program in all the landmarks across the arc for easy tuning).

Beacons are most useful in a SNG case if you have a shot to a bird with not a lot of full-time activity or even any activity on it, so you can use the beacon to get in the ballpark and then call up the satellite operator and come up per their instructions so they can see if you are in the right place/sat.

 

[Tron]

...(or cheapie consumer DVB box that you can find in some trucks for backup transmission quality monitoring or for the fact they hold many more channels that a lot of commercial DVB receivers so one could program in all the landmarks across the arc for easy tuning).

One engineer I know at a local network affiliate uses a Traxis to blind scan satellites when the truck forgets to call in the feed details to the studio ...

 

[mikelib]

Try Lyngsat

Does anyone have a list of satellite beacons in our sky, on each bird, or are they hard to find and document?

Bob,
Lyngsat has some of them on there website:
AMC 6 at 72.0°W - LyngSat SatTracker
Mike Lib