satosk
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- Aug 10, 2009
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- My Satellite Setup
- Be independent and your TV screen will never be the same.
- My Location
- Slovakia - Heart of Europe
Many of us, satellite enthusiasts can receive almost everything that a clear view, a big enough satellite dish and a pc card TBS 5952/6952 can offer. Therefore, there are only a few Ku band satellites out there that are still unknown to European DXers. They hide their identity by transmitting signals in the latest systems such as Multistreams or PLP transmission. Because of that there are only small group of DXers that can receive and watch them. Today I`d like to show you reception of position 92.2°E in the ABS-S system....
ChinaSat 9 satellite (ZhongXing 9-Chinese Star 9) was launched in orbit from Xichang space centre in Sichuan province, China on 9 June 2008 on the board of Long March 3B (Chang Zheng 3b) rocket. ChinaSat 9 was built by French manufacturer Thales Alenia Space on the Spacebus 4000 C1 platform with designed life of 15 years. There are 22 Ku band transponders on board,of which are 18 with 36 MHz bandwidth and 4 with 54 MHz bandwidth.
Satellite is currently used by China Direct Broadcast Satellite Company and located at 92.2°E.
The satellite`s very first mission was to act as a relay satellite for the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing, China. ChinaSat 9 is currently considered as the only Chinese DTH satellite that provides TV and Radio services for remote rural areas of China as part of the project called „Expanding the Networks to Every Village (村村通)“ enabling TV and Radio services to be delivered to villages with 20 households or more. Transmission is FTA in homegrown standard called ABS-S (Advanced Satellite Broadcasting System), which allows using the bandwidth capacity much better than the European standard DVB-S2. Unfortunately, ABS-S system can`t be received by any DVB-S/S2 receiver that is currently on the EU market. It is not such a long time ago, when there was a PC card, model TBS 8930 manufactured by Tenow International available on the market. Unfortunately, the manufacturer has stopped production and there is no substitute at the moment. The only way to receive this system is to use a standard satellite receiver based on an AVL1108 chip that was designed for this purpose by Chinese engineers.
As I am in touch with different sellers and manufacturers from around the world, we were lucky to start cooperation with Mr Yang Wang, the trade manager of Anhui Bowei Electronics Technology Co., Ltd., China, who supplied an ABS-S satellite set for ChinaSat 9 reception.
The set we got contains a NewStar ABS-S A525 satellite receiver that supports ABS-S standard and a 26 cm planar antenna, model BSS-180P. The antenna is designed for circular polarization in 11.7-12.2 GHz bandwidth. As you can see at the picture, Peon`s position in Michalovce, Slovakia is completely out of footprint and the satellite is at his location only 4.3° above the horizon. Therefore the original dish couldn`t be used, but it will be used for other projects Peon has in mind.
The NewStar ABS-S A525 satellite receiver is very small and comes with a Chinese power plug (the same as used in the US), but receiver uses 90-265 voltage. There`s a power switch on the side and a three led display on the front panel together with Channel Up and Down buttons. The back of the receiver contains 2 Video Out cinch connectors, 2 x L/R Audio Out and a connector for software upgrade. Of course, there`s 1 x LNB In, too.
Remote control uses standard number keys and the rest of useful commands is very easy to remember (learn) once in use. The receiver`s default setting is set to Chinese language and as Peon mentioned, it is a nightmare. Everybody knows that feeling if you don`t understand a word what is written and when you press the button you only hope this is exactly what you really need. The good news is that the NewStar ABS-S A525 is friendlier than any other receivers designed for the Chinese market. It gives the user an option to switch from Chinese to English language and allows us to enjoy using it! It took Peon only a few clicks to do it, so the search could begin….
Switching languages:
For the ChinaSat 9 reception a 2.5m PF dish was used together with the feedhorn + tranformator +depolarizator for circular polarization and the following LNBs: 1) SMW WDL Digital Type “E“ 0.8 dB, 2) Astrotel Precision Gold Label Series 0.5 dB a 3) Invacom SNF-031 Lnb 0.3 dB.
As we mentioned before, the satellite is positioned only 4.3° above the horizon, so the view is not completely clear. The tree that is in the way is still covered by leaves which are still there because of no strong winds and mild winter. This causes signal loss, so we had to expect that.
Even so, Peon could lock the position using his Emitor Combolook meter spectrum analyzer without problems. Then the frequency 11880 LC was successfully locked by receiver and scanned all available TV and Radio services. There are 36 TV and 24 Radio channels at the moment even some of the TV channels are doubled. Among the stations you can get are CCTV channels and some regional TV stations from different Chinese provinces. Transmission is in 4:3 format and switching between channels is very fast. We may say that it is faster than we know it from any DVB-S/S2 receiver so far. Because receiver doesn`t have 22 kHz signal, no Uni Lnb can be used for full scan. On the other hand the receiver allows us to use a DiseqC 1-4 switch and gives us different options for scanning and set the necessary type of LO for the used LNB. Menu is very simple and user friendly, so orientation is very easy for anybody. Especially if switched to English.
End of part 1.
ChinaSat 9 satellite (ZhongXing 9-Chinese Star 9) was launched in orbit from Xichang space centre in Sichuan province, China on 9 June 2008 on the board of Long March 3B (Chang Zheng 3b) rocket. ChinaSat 9 was built by French manufacturer Thales Alenia Space on the Spacebus 4000 C1 platform with designed life of 15 years. There are 22 Ku band transponders on board,of which are 18 with 36 MHz bandwidth and 4 with 54 MHz bandwidth.
Satellite is currently used by China Direct Broadcast Satellite Company and located at 92.2°E.
The satellite`s very first mission was to act as a relay satellite for the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing, China. ChinaSat 9 is currently considered as the only Chinese DTH satellite that provides TV and Radio services for remote rural areas of China as part of the project called „Expanding the Networks to Every Village (村村通)“ enabling TV and Radio services to be delivered to villages with 20 households or more. Transmission is FTA in homegrown standard called ABS-S (Advanced Satellite Broadcasting System), which allows using the bandwidth capacity much better than the European standard DVB-S2. Unfortunately, ABS-S system can`t be received by any DVB-S/S2 receiver that is currently on the EU market. It is not such a long time ago, when there was a PC card, model TBS 8930 manufactured by Tenow International available on the market. Unfortunately, the manufacturer has stopped production and there is no substitute at the moment. The only way to receive this system is to use a standard satellite receiver based on an AVL1108 chip that was designed for this purpose by Chinese engineers.
As I am in touch with different sellers and manufacturers from around the world, we were lucky to start cooperation with Mr Yang Wang, the trade manager of Anhui Bowei Electronics Technology Co., Ltd., China, who supplied an ABS-S satellite set for ChinaSat 9 reception.
The set we got contains a NewStar ABS-S A525 satellite receiver that supports ABS-S standard and a 26 cm planar antenna, model BSS-180P. The antenna is designed for circular polarization in 11.7-12.2 GHz bandwidth. As you can see at the picture, Peon`s position in Michalovce, Slovakia is completely out of footprint and the satellite is at his location only 4.3° above the horizon. Therefore the original dish couldn`t be used, but it will be used for other projects Peon has in mind.
The NewStar ABS-S A525 satellite receiver is very small and comes with a Chinese power plug (the same as used in the US), but receiver uses 90-265 voltage. There`s a power switch on the side and a three led display on the front panel together with Channel Up and Down buttons. The back of the receiver contains 2 Video Out cinch connectors, 2 x L/R Audio Out and a connector for software upgrade. Of course, there`s 1 x LNB In, too.
Remote control uses standard number keys and the rest of useful commands is very easy to remember (learn) once in use. The receiver`s default setting is set to Chinese language and as Peon mentioned, it is a nightmare. Everybody knows that feeling if you don`t understand a word what is written and when you press the button you only hope this is exactly what you really need. The good news is that the NewStar ABS-S A525 is friendlier than any other receivers designed for the Chinese market. It gives the user an option to switch from Chinese to English language and allows us to enjoy using it! It took Peon only a few clicks to do it, so the search could begin….
Switching languages:
For the ChinaSat 9 reception a 2.5m PF dish was used together with the feedhorn + tranformator +depolarizator for circular polarization and the following LNBs: 1) SMW WDL Digital Type “E“ 0.8 dB, 2) Astrotel Precision Gold Label Series 0.5 dB a 3) Invacom SNF-031 Lnb 0.3 dB.
As we mentioned before, the satellite is positioned only 4.3° above the horizon, so the view is not completely clear. The tree that is in the way is still covered by leaves which are still there because of no strong winds and mild winter. This causes signal loss, so we had to expect that.
Even so, Peon could lock the position using his Emitor Combolook meter spectrum analyzer without problems. Then the frequency 11880 LC was successfully locked by receiver and scanned all available TV and Radio services. There are 36 TV and 24 Radio channels at the moment even some of the TV channels are doubled. Among the stations you can get are CCTV channels and some regional TV stations from different Chinese provinces. Transmission is in 4:3 format and switching between channels is very fast. We may say that it is faster than we know it from any DVB-S/S2 receiver so far. Because receiver doesn`t have 22 kHz signal, no Uni Lnb can be used for full scan. On the other hand the receiver allows us to use a DiseqC 1-4 switch and gives us different options for scanning and set the necessary type of LO for the used LNB. Menu is very simple and user friendly, so orientation is very easy for anybody. Especially if switched to English.
End of part 1.
