Satellite On My Mind
It might be quiet in the world of satellite industry news, but I have a lot of satellite on my mind.
It is my birthday this Saturday and this year for my birthday my wife is letting me get something I have craved for years a C Band Satellite Dish!
My first satellite dish I ever purchased was a 10 Foot C/KU band Dish that cost me over $3,000 at the time. I was only 18 years old when I purchased my first Dish. That dish gave me hundreds of hours of entertainment. There wasn’t a night I had it when I wasn’t scanning the skies.
I was very sad when I had to move and couldn’t take my Dish with me. Since that time I have wanted another C Band dish. Over the years many folks have been trying to talk me out of getting another big dish saying that there is nothing left up there for free to watch and enjoy.
A few weeks ago, I picked up this LNB from a company named SatelliteAV in California, this LNB was a special C Band LNB which could be used on a smaller offset KU band dish. Others have told me a “Mini Bud” was possible so I wanted to try it myself.
I took the LNB and hooked it up to my 1.2 Meter (4 Foot) KU band Dish. Within moments I was able to lock on to a c band signal. It was a college baseball game and it looked good. But due to the size of my Dish the signal did pixelate from time to time, but still I was receiving C Band signals on a small KU Band Dish. I was excited!
I wired things up and went into the house and slaved my old GI 650 C/KU band analog receiver and scanned the skies. I quickly found a soccer game, the picture looked so crisp and clean you could have sworn it was in high definition. Moving along I found a number of in the clear wild feeds including feeds of popular syndicated television shows. I was in heaven.
But while I was able to pick up a number of C Band signals great on my small 1.2 meter dish there was a lot I could not pick up. If I wanted to pick those up I knew I would need a bigger Dish. After playing with the “Mini Bud” for a few hours I needed to have my KU band back, so sadly I went outside and removed the C Band LNB and put the KU band LNB back on.
I ran around for days excited that I was able to pick up C Band satellite signals on such a small Dish. Then a few days later I felt sad… I wanted more C Band signals. I then talked my wife and she told me no she wasn’t going to let me get a bigger Dish. Where I live our Dish is in the front yard, I can’t put it in the backyard as if I do I will be able to see any of the satellites as they will be blocked by the house.
So for the last few weeks my wife has been asking me what I want for my birthday, I kepts saying a C Band Dish, she would laugh and say no…
But this week she surprised me and told me I could go ahead and order it, and I could only get it on one condition, and that condition was I must cleanup and rewire the other satellite dishes in the yard so things look neater. I agreed… can you guess what I will be doing this weekend?
I have a great wife!
Man I can’t wait for that C Band dish to get here!
SATRUDER commented:
Hello my friend the time for buds (big ugly dishes)is gone but many people still using it, we have to blame Directv and Dishnetwork for this.
Actually there is another kind of c band dish 1.8 mt. or 2.5 mt. called prime focus dish that you can buy a very low price between 250 to 500
us dollars. take a look on the internet and good luck.
jself commented:
I love my cband and 4dtv, its my hobby, you never know what is up there and what you may stumble on that others won't see for quite sometime.
KyL commented:
Free to air C-Band now a days is mostly just random wild feeds of sports, news feeds and syndicated programming. You can still catch some interesting stuff when you randomly scan the skies, especially evenings during newscasts and sports, or overnight when most syndicated programming is fed to affiliates, but the majority of actual linear channels converted to digital and went encrypted and now require a subscription.
bobvick commented:
I miss my C-Band dish. I first got C-Band in 1985 and then I moved and had cable until 1993 when I got a new 10' SAMI with a Drake ESR-1824. I went to a GI DSR-920 (4DTV) in 1997 and to a DSR-922 in 2000.
Around 2001 the actuator began to give me problems so I got a DirecTV system and in the summer of 01 I took the old C-Band dish down. I wish that I had kept it installed, I ended up letting a guy that roofed my house have it to carry it off for scrap metal.
Steve commented:
you could have had mine... Six months ago, I finally relented to my wife's pressures to get the dish out of our yard. It was mounted on a 4 wheel trailer and was the first or second portable C-Band antenna built by Charlie Ergen's company in 1982 - I believe. It was a dual C/Ku and it still worked perfectly but she was tired of sweeping snow out of it during the winters... I built a Teleport in CO and used the backyard dish to monitor our own transmissions when I was not at the facility... enjoy yours
Jim commented:
Here is a link to a picture of the front of the house. Try this link aquicklaugh.com/archives/aql0528s.html
MLBurks commented:
I'm guessing your yard looks like a space sport (which would be cool by the way)!
celticpride commented:
I wish i lived next door to you so i could see what channels you receive. I hope you'll give us an update and let us know how it turns out for you
Jeffro commented:
I'm really curious what your yard looks like with all those satelllite dishes on it. Would you please post a picture of your yard on this site or perhaps a link to a site that has a picture of your yard with the satellite dishes on it?
