Eutelsat 28A ceases operations @ 28.5 east

Well, a few years back, HOTBIRD signals were good over India. As well as there were many russian sats, like ABS1 @75e, Yamal 90e etc having gud coverage.
But these days, almost all russian sats. have vanished.

There has to be some reason attributed to the sudden vanishing of all these sats. :confused
 
shawl_who said:
Well, a few years back, HOTBIRD signals were good over India. As well as there were many russian sats, like ABS1 @75e, Yamal 90e etc having gud coverage.
But these days, almost all russian sats. have vanished.

There has to be some reason attributed to the sudden vanishing of all these sats. :confused
Click to expand...
It's because satellite operators these days in general have transmission footprints that aim to concentrate high powered signals into locations where it is required, and one of the effects of this is to limit spillover into areas where reception would be either superfluous or even undesired. The Hotbird group of satellites is one of the exceptions to high-powered Ku Band satellites in Europe where it has a significant "secondary" coverage area off its main beam that extends across much of the Middle East and into Central Asia as far as western China. That position is very popular with many Farsi language broadcasters (for example) with the added benefit of programming also able to reach exiles in Europe.

On the other hand, SES Astra's European craft have since its early days had footprints that are fairly tight with secondary overspill quickly diminishing outside the core service areas. The main exceptions to this were the original 2D & 1N spot beams at 28 East when they were still finding their feet with organising very tight footprints (something they have now got better with 2E/F/G) and the 1M wide beam that had coverage extending into the Middle East as far as Dubai.

Eutelsat have footprints at different positions to meet different requirements. It's medium power craft at 3 East and 21.5 East have very wide footprints that do indeed extend into northern and western parts of India but they're not really suitable for Direct-To-Home platforms because they don't have enough power to allow reliable reception with small (>70cm) dishes. What is now their 33C satellite that was once 28A & Eurobird 1 actually didn't even cover the Middle East effectively with its main beam when it was stationed at 28 East, though it covered most of Europe reasonably well.

Where I am, I can see to around 80 degrees west on the horizon, but there is no effective chance for me to receive any American satellites that extend over to that part of the arc. Those satellites are intended to be received in different parts of the Americas and overspill into the western fringes of Europe isn't really possible unless you start using dishes the size of major radio telescopes.

As analoguesat says, tighter spot beams are the future in many cases where Direct-To-Home reception is intended to meet demands, and this will mean that along with tighter beams to concentrate signals allowing small-dish reception, frequency reuse on such craft on different beams will make out-of-area reception harder. This is already the case at 45 East where the same frequencies are already being reused between Indian and European footprints.
 
If the trend of these spot beams continue, it will be a nightmare of sat hunters. :-Axechase
 
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