A 10 ft dish plus some rather inexpensive extra hardware & software should actually be sufficient to do some basic amateur radio astronomy, like detecting the 21cm hydrogen line emission in the galactic plane, e.g. see http://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-for-budget-radio-astronomy/. Measurement of this emission from atomic neutral hydrogen was crucial to establish the spiral structure of our galaxy, some 65 years ago.
As for the original subject of this thread: thanks for the kind words on E@H. Especially since it motivates to continue the support for stuff like the RaspberryPi.
My BIG dish is a C-Band and KU-band dish so that is the lower and higher microwave frequencies.
I used to use it to get everything back in the 1980's and then in the 90's with a videocipher decoder when they first started scrambling channels so we had to pay and after a while it was just cheaper to use the small dishes (DirecTV and DISH) and the other one was one I used for my ISP since at the time all we had was a dialup.
Then when those small dishes switched to HD I just made one to test myself and finally switched my original Dish to HD since I already had a couple HDTV's (67in RP and an 82in DLP)
The BIG dish still has free stuff if you want to look around and it picks up all the satellites in the western hemisphere....usually can find unscrambled stuff and unedited news feeds and *backhaul* feeds.
We used that BIG dish every day until about 2003 and have seen things live and unedited from around the world that 99.99% of humans never saw like we did.
I watched all the space shuttle launches back when the channel was mainly for Nasa and it was called Nasa Select back then and we got the Armed Forces Satellite feed so I got what they had.
And for about 20 years I got to watch all my favorite teams play via the "backhaul" feed so there was no commercials and they stayed on the air during the breaks so I heard and saw things that only the channels producers would see
Most people that had the BIG dish back in the 80's and 90's only had the C-band version but I was a microwave engineer so I had to see what KU-band had.
These small dishes are not fun like the BIG dish.......they just sit there pointed at one or two satellites but the BIG dish has a long arc of satellites to look at and pick up audio.
There are other types of signals these days too but they aren't worth paying for the new receivers and the different LNB and feedhorns.
Where I live satellite is still the only way to get TV since those HD antennas don't work when you are too far away from the city (Seattle) and have mountains and hills in the way.
RE: Well I live in the
)
Best neighbors to have!
What do you pick up on the dishes?
Hi! A 10 ft dish plus some
)
Hi!
A 10 ft dish plus some rather inexpensive extra hardware & software should actually be sufficient to do some basic amateur radio astronomy, like detecting the 21cm hydrogen line emission in the galactic plane, e.g. see
http://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-for-budget-radio-astronomy/. Measurement of this emission from atomic neutral hydrogen was crucial to establish the spiral structure of our galaxy, some 65 years ago.
As for the original subject of this thread: thanks for the kind words on E@H. Especially since it motivates to continue the support for stuff like the RaspberryPi.
Cheers
HB
RE: Best neighbors to
)
My BIG dish is a C-Band and KU-band dish so that is the lower and higher microwave frequencies.
I used to use it to get everything back in the 1980's and then in the 90's with a videocipher decoder when they first started scrambling channels so we had to pay and after a while it was just cheaper to use the small dishes (DirecTV and DISH) and the other one was one I used for my ISP since at the time all we had was a dialup.
Then when those small dishes switched to HD I just made one to test myself and finally switched my original Dish to HD since I already had a couple HDTV's (67in RP and an 82in DLP)
The BIG dish still has free stuff if you want to look around and it picks up all the satellites in the western hemisphere....usually can find unscrambled stuff and unedited news feeds and *backhaul* feeds.
We used that BIG dish every day until about 2003 and have seen things live and unedited from around the world that 99.99% of humans never saw like we did.
I watched all the space shuttle launches back when the channel was mainly for Nasa and it was called Nasa Select back then and we got the Armed Forces Satellite feed so I got what they had.
And for about 20 years I got to watch all my favorite teams play via the "backhaul" feed so there was no commercials and they stayed on the air during the breaks so I heard and saw things that only the channels producers would see
Most people that had the BIG dish back in the 80's and 90's only had the C-band version but I was a microwave engineer so I had to see what KU-band had.
These small dishes are not fun like the BIG dish.......they just sit there pointed at one or two satellites but the BIG dish has a long arc of satellites to look at and pick up audio.
There are other types of signals these days too but they aren't worth paying for the new receivers and the different LNB and feedhorns.
Where I live satellite is still the only way to get TV since those HD antennas don't work when you are too far away from the city (Seattle) and have mountains and hills in the way.