Returning After 10 Years – Is the Satellite Hobby Still Alive?

Barkey1988 said:
I started a good few years ago when i started learning German just before covid. During lockdown i was living at my parents at the time and got a sky 2 dish and used canes on the floor to point in the general area i needed to point to and after a bit of manoeuvring i got there.

Days later i stumbled upon people who had multiple lnbs on the single dish and thought i'd give it a go so a diseqc later and 3 more lnbs manage to get 3 out of the 4 lined up out of trial and error peaking at about 3500 channels across 16, 19.2 and 28.2.

Moved out and i have just put a triax 65 dish up and managed to get a good solid 85% intensity and 71% quality from 19.2e and awaiting a long horn lnb in order to get three more on a multi feed setup.

I love scanning and pushing to see how many channels i can pick up without going motorised.
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I can relate to that. These days I'm feeling a bit lazy when it comes to squeezing every last bit of performance out of my 6ft dish, and I find myself thinking about just buying a 3.7m dish so I can build an even better multi-LNB setup with less efforts.

I still remember 10–12 years ago when my father and I would spend entire evenings working on dish setups and signal improvements, sometimes continuing until early morning. The funny thing was that whenever we finally managed to get the absolute best signal on a weak satellite or multi-LNB setup, we'd get greedy and try to improve it just a little bit more. More often than not, we'd end up losing that perfect peak signal and spend hours trying to get it back again!
 
Analoguesat said:
I started in the last years of the 1990s with a satellite dish propped up on bricks, some ratty old cable and a cast off Pace analogue receiver. I knew the analogue channels from 19E but it was great fun to chase down those from 16E & 13E and watch new stuff for the first time
The dish used to blow over regularly so I switched to an old tyre rescued from the woods :-lmao

Then the Turkish stations on 42E were logged, then as I spotted more then I started the old Analoguesat website to record what was findable at minimal cost using redundant equipment.

I never used any content management systems - everything was coded manually using MS Front Page :D
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I must say you were ahead of your time. Manually coding an entire satellite website without any CMS is seriously impressive.

Even though I work in SEO and web development today, I can't imagine building and maintaining a whole site manually in FrontPage. These days everyone relies on WordPress, frameworks, plugins, and automation. Back then you had to understand every page and edit everything yourself.
 
Yup that what I did :D Its archived on the Wayback Machine :D

Code: 
https://web.archive.org/web/20160306125614/http://analoguesat.co.uk/

It looks horribly basic compared to modern websites but please remember i specifically kept it simple. At the time I was on a 2.5meg inbound 0.5meg outbound "broadband" so I HAD to keep things very very simple - no fancy effects on 0.5meg upload!!


This particular archived version is the final iteration - after analogue had closed in Europe. I kept the site live on my free webspace from Demon Internet until I changed provider then as it was archived I allowed it to die. (I think it was 60mb per hour transfer rates allowed on that old Demon account!) :-rofl2
 
I do have all the files somewhere so theoretically I could recreate it but theres no point. I let the address lapse so its probably been hijacked years ago
 
As expected the old analoguesat web address is still active - as a hijack.

Theres some basic AI slop (with a lot of inaccuracies as usual) about satellite broadcasts then a BIG section of link drops. DONT go & visit it - use the wayback machine link a couple of posts above if you want to relive the glory days of my old website :D



Just a word of warning if exploring the old site - many of the old links I put into it are long dead. Be VERY wary of trying to visit any original web addresses - lapsed sites are commonly taken over by bad actors & you could find your computer or tablet being compromised by some VERY nasty malwares - without you being aware of it.
 
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This is a GREAT read.

Like many, I was a lightweight user, plug and play before, er, plug and play.

BUT it got me hooked.

I had a reasonable East range but housing severely limited West away from due south not even to SSW..

I sat with both my young girls [now into mid late 20's] and with masking tape on TV screen minced around getting strongest signal from "inching" the motor.

really great times and as many have said the lack of freedom that todays [national] internet controls bring are actually oppressive to those of us who can actually see it happening [enough politics]

So yes I'm hoping my old setup can be restored I don't want the newest, latest and greatest ---- I just want to go back in time. Seriously.

thanks for letting me join.

spartina.
 
Do you still live at the same property or do you now have a better viewing arc?

What would you like to watch/listen to ?

Anything non-English ?
 
Analoguesat said:
Some very interesting comments in this thread. My feeling - and Ive mentioned this previously - is that the hobby as a whole is going the same way as ham radio. Its in terminal decline. The guys who were the really active ones in the hobby & on the forums 15-20 years ago are getting elderly & leaving the hobby or passing on & there are next to no young folk coming in at the bottom end to take over the baton. (I went to a ham radio convention a couple of years ago - there must have been 200 people in the room & I reckoned there were less than a dozen people under 60 in there - and the vast majority were in their 70s & 80s. I havent bothered going back).
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Agreed. I'm working in HE after a lifetime of high tech jobs and yes in general I don't see that the population has the HUNGER to learn how to do stuff, they are mostly spoon fed, what they want to hear, and any get up and go has been diluted out of them.
Get on your Bike? not a chance.
Analoguesat said:
chasing down new signals & seeing how far you can push your dishes is always interesting.
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That always was the bit that got me going!
 
Channel Hopper said:
Do you still live at the same property or do you now have a better viewing arc?

What would you like to watch/listen to ?

Anything non-English ?
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In order--Same building, arc reduced by tree growth [wip]; anything that takes my fancy I found keeping an open mind useful; I learned on arriving in France that I was linguistically out of my depth, the only course of action was to Watch and Learn then basically learn more than just stilted yes, no, 2 sugars and milk etc then go for it. So the last answer is no not just English.
 
spartina said:
In order--Same building, arc reduced by tree growth [wip]; anything that takes my fancy I found keeping an open mind useful; I learned on arriving in France that I was linguistically out of my depth, the only course of action was to Watch and Learn then basically learn more than just stilted yes, no, 2 sugars and milk etc then go for it. So the last answer is no not just English.
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So, ladder and strimmer first, then look at your best location for the foundations of a lovely large dish.

How good are your neighbours ?

(How accepting is your wife ?)
 
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It's the communist council that is the issue with that idea.
 
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