stevienire said:
I live in the most western part of Ireland. And was wondering if it would be possible to pick up any channels from DirectTV or Dish Network??
AlexBellisBrown said:
Can i pick up any american networks like FOX of ABC here in spain? I would also like to watch good morning america (Just out of interest) anyone have ideas?
In Ireland (and Spain), there are — strictly speaking — two
American satellites above the horizon (i.e. you can point your dish at them in the sky), both of which carry the U.S. networks:
Echostar 3 at 61.5°W (carries all the networks except NBC and FOX) and
DirecTV 1 at 72.5°W (carries all 7 networks).
Both these satellites, HOWEVER, have "footprints" which are solely focused on North America and so anyone able to point their dishes at these satellites across the Atlantic in Europe will still have a problem, because he or she is "out of footprint"; in fact,
way out of footprint!
Having said that, this doesn't mean that it is still not
theoretically possible to pick up the signals from those satellites, but it would require a VERY BIG dish, meaning probably anywhere in the range of, say, 10 to 50 meters in diameter, could even be bigger than that (or it could be smaller!). No one knows yet, or at least I don't know yet. It would be really interesting to know just how big a dish was needed in, say, Ireland (or Spain/Portugal) or at least to know if it was possible with a < 10 m dish (It has been
reported that
Echostar 3 has been received in Iceland [with a 5 or 6 m dish?], and in Tenerife (Canary Islands) with a 2.4 m dish, both places nowhere near the "official" footprint.).
stevienire said:
Could I pick up anything from the U.S if I had a 3m dish? I have a clear view straight across the atlantic.
In that case, then you are most likely able to point your dish at another satellite,
Nimiq 2 at 82°W, as well (it's just above the horizon). If U.S. TV is what you're after, then this satellite is perhaps the most interesting proposition. It's a Canadian satellite
and it has all 4 major U.S. networks on board — in High Definition! (It also carries Discovery and NFL Sunday Ticket – again, both in HD!)
However, as with the other two satellites, you are still
way out of footprint! But since this satellite is further west, it looks down onto its target – i.e. the continental U.S. (and Canada) – at a different angle than its neighbour satellites to the east, such as
Echostar 3, which means that if both satellites have similar footprints, then the one which is further west is more likely to spill over to the east, i.e. towards Europe, or at least that is how I see it somehow. :-shifty So, again, I think it would be interesting to see just how big a dish were needed to catch this bird as well as all the other
CONUS birds to the east of it.
Also, it seems, the "unthinkable" HAS been achieved in some places: there is some guy in Brazil (according to TSI amongst others) who watches
ASTRA 1!!! If you have a look at the
footprint for Astra 1 (19.2°E), and then have a
look at the earth exactly as it looks like from the satellite in orbit, you will notice just how FAAAAAAAAR away Brazil is from the official footprint! Considering his location, I am truly amazed that he manages to pull it off with "ONLY" an
8 m dish!!!
But don't get me wrong here, don't go off and buy a huge 5-10 m dish straight away, for starters those big antennas are bl***y expensive! And also I do wonder if it isn't possible to just measure the raw signal coming off the satellite first using a "small" dish and then calculate/determine what size of dish would be needed. Maybe some expert could elaborate more on that.