Advice on Two Birds

[tradewinds]

Hi All,
I am very new to C-Band. The reason I am exploring this option is that I recently noticed two channels I would like to get that are apparently free. One from Barbados and the other from Jamaica. These are the channels:

SportsMax (for cricket matches. Same matches sold in packages in USA):
http://www.lyngsat.com/intel707.html

CaribVision:
http://www.lyngsat.com/intel1r.html


I am in Florida. My questions are:

1) Can I get these channels?
2) What equipment do I need (receiver, actuator, dish, cable, etc.)?
3) Confirm that the are indeed free channels

Thanks

 

[putney]

Looks like a 10' c-band for SportsMax and a 6' for CaribVision are the requirements for florida.

http://www.lyngsat-maps.com/maps/intel707_westhemi.html
http://www.lyngsat-maps.com/maps/intel1r_uslam.html

You might be able to mount 2 LNBs on a 10 footer, 8º apart, focussed on Intelsat 707 at 53.0°W for a fixed setup...or buy an actuator & G-box.

The encryption is DVB so they are ITC and any low cost box will work, but most on this site would probably recommend a Coolsat.

Maybe someone pulling those sats can offer more info.

 

[tradewinds]

Thanks Putney. Argh! A 10'. I was hoping the 8' special deal would work. I appreciate the detailed input.

 

[putney]

Well on the low side 255cm (8.6 feet) for intel707, so it's possible with 8', I'm guessing. Not a strong sat.

Here's hoping someone in the S.E. chimes in with more info!

 

[pendragon]

The coverage map for Intelsat 707 is deceiving. The edge of the footprint has an EIRP of 32.3 dBW, for which Lyngsat recommends a 10' dish. However Florida is not on the edge of the footprint and almost certainly receives more power than the edge. Unfortunately the coverage map provides no other contours. The beam peak is shown as 40 dBW, which is pretty typical for C-band. It's hard to say with any certainty, but I expect an 8' would work fine and there's a decent possibility you could get by with a 6'.

HOWEVER, Intelsat 707 is a circularly polarized satellite, which is untypical for North America. While a number of feeds can be adapted to receive this type of transmission by inserting a dielectric plate, all but one will then lose the ability to receive linear polarization, which you need for Intelsat 1R. Also there are significant CNR losses caused by these plates, which might force you to a larger dish. There is one feed that doesn't suffer from these losses, but it's very expensive and it cannot switch between circular and linear without a manual rotation.

I'm not sure SportsMax is still there. The Lyngsat listing for it dates to 2005 and when I looked a month or so ago, I saw no hint of it on the spectrum analyzer. However I'm in Colorado so I may be out of footprint if that happens to be a low power transponder or if this is on a Caribbean beam. I wouldn't proceed with Intelsat 707 until someone chimes in that this feed is still there.

I'd recommend a dish with an actuator rather than trying to space the feeds 8 degrees apart. There is a lot more up there worth watching than just these two birds. If you try to mount two feeds on the dish, because of the problems of getting circular and linear polarizations on the the same feed, you'll generally do better by offsetting them by the same amount. For example, if you mount one feed dead on-center and the other 8 degrees off-center, the latter will suffer around a 3 dB loss. On a 8' dish, that will give only a sensitivity of a 5.7' dish. If both feeds are offset by 4 degrees each, you might only suffer about a 0.75 dB loss on each. I wrote a thread on how to get this down a lot more, and in that case I couldn't measure any loss at all.

 

[tradewinds]

ya, been hunting about the net and the price from the 8' special deal here to a 10' is real steep and most likely will be a deal breaker in getting the content on those sats. Oh well, looks like I'll be waiting longer to see if a 10' turns up in my neck of the woods for reasonable.

 

[tradewinds]

Thanks Pendragon for the detail information. I guess I'll wait for someone to confirm if SportsMax is still on that bird. Hopefully they moved since then to something with less dish size requirement. I'm surprised Lyngsat and satbeams and sites like that are not updated to reflect it.

At least their website still looks up:
Sportsmax Online

 

[tradewinds]

BTW - I did a search for the channel on Satbeam's website and the channel appears to also be on Intelsat 805

SatBeams - Satellite charts - Channel list - Intelsat 805 (IS-805)

But with PowerVu encryption so I guess it will not work.