Ancient TVRO relic from 1980 could apply today

[caddata]

Do any of you oldtimers remember the spherical dishes that the homebrewers were building when Bob Cooper was just a teenager? For those not so old, TVRO (Television Receive Only) was the term used to describe the first backyard satellite dishes. Just about everyone involved in it was an electronics buff that had built ham equipment. The plans and construction article I read were in a Popular Electronics project written by Coop himself.

The spherical dish could be thought of as a section cut out of a big basketball 50 feet in diameter and supported by a stationary wooden framework. It looked to the untrained eye (today's HOA) like a flower trellis. It was tilted back at the top so as to reflect the satellite signal to an LNA about 25 feet away on a post about 6' tall. Each satellite had it's own LAN or you moved the post to what satellite you wanted to watch. The post locations, or additional posts were marked to simplify the positioning of a single LNA. You mowed your yard very carefully because of the coax running across he backyard.

The dish's reflective surface was 1/4" square mesh hardware cloth (C band). Today you'd have to cover it with 1/16" mesh aluminum screen wire for Ku band. The only Ku band around back then were the radar guns that the local Police used for speed limit control The hardware cloth was stapled or tacked to thin strips of redwood or cedar that were suspended above the framework on allthread rods that could be adjusted in or out to fit the radius of the sphere. The center of the sphere was the focal point. During construction, or later tweaking and retuning, a string was tied at the focalpoint and stretched towards the screen surface. The allthread was threaded in or out to make the wood strip touch the free end of the string, which might have a plumb bob or something similar on the free end.

Don't know how many of these were built, but for several years there weren't many surplus or used dishes around.

Harold

 

[starman345]

The article, plan you speak of is in an issue of Popular Mechanics 1982. I still have that issue here somewhere, saw it a little while ago. I started to build that dish and came to a crashing halt when I went shopping for the electronic parts, seems it was about 6 months wages at the time. Of course at the time an installed dish up here was going for around $5000, that was a lot of money back then. Gotta see if I can find that issue and see if it was Bob Cooper. During a work trip two years ago I drove by an old farm and out on the lawn was a wooden dish, it had wooden struts, parabola, not spherical, screen of some type stretched across the struts. It looked in very good shape, may even had still been in use.. I was behind schedule on that day and have never been back. Someday I"ve got to go and get some pictures of that.
There is also a very interesting article about satellite in an issue of Reader Digest from 1977. I remember that one well, it sparked my interest for the first time in satellite.

 

[Lucky53]

yup...remember all that neet stuff by Cooper....Anyone remember the Keith Lamonaca days?????

 

[swampman]

If someone could post a pic of this setup it would be awesome.

 

[caddata]

The article, plan you speak of is in an issue of Popular Mechanics 1982. I still have that issue here somewhere, saw it a little while ago.

Would it violate any copyrights if you scanned and posted the article as long as we acknowledged Popular Mechanics in the post? Wish I'd kept my copy of the magazine.

It must have been Popular Electronics that had a series of articles on the homebrew receiver that Coop was involved with. Can't think of the name of the hobbist that actually built the receiver, but Coop helped and promoted it.

Harold

 

[starman345]

Would it violate any copyrights if you scanned and posted the article as long as we acknowledged Popular Mechanics in the post? Wish I'd kept my copy of the magazine.

It must have been Popular Electronics that had a series of articles on the homebrew receiver that Coop was involved with. Can't think of the name of the hobbist that actually built the receiver, but Coop helped and promoted it.

Harold

Caddata, you were probably right about the magazine in the first place. That could have been popular electronics, in any case I've been looking for it and can't put my hands on it, however I did uncover an issue of Mechanix Illustrated (August 1983) with a picture of a home built 11 ft parablola on the cover and a 16 page section on how to to built it inside, that one is by James Anderson. That is the one that I saw on the farmers lawn that I mentioned above! I knew I had seen it before. The struts are made of galvanized conduit, the perimiter is redwood, looks like 2x6 planks.There is also a picture of a spherical in that article showing the different types of dishes. Sorry, I don't have a scanner, I looked for an online archive of older issues of this magazine, but turned up nothing. You might be able to find it in a library.
I remember Keith Lamonica, Dan Morgan, Gary Bourgeois, Sean Kenny, all those guys and others I can't remember right now were a great inspiration to me and many others I'm sure who were interested in satellite. i used to record their radio programs on audio cassette( I had a 7 tape capacity recorder just for those shows) and listen to them later, some of those shows ran right through the night. I still have a lot of those tapes.
Anyone else got old satellite stories from the early days? Should start a satellite nostalgia thread

 

[Inno]

I would love to have a look at those articles. I knew of only one person way back then who had built his own, not sure how it would compare to the one in the article........perhaps it's the same design. His was at a remote camp where they generated their own electricity from a small river flowing through the area.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Speaking of Coop, below is a video of him from last night. I enjoyed spending the past few days with this legend.

To view this video please CLICK HERE

 

[starman345]

Speaking of Coop, below is a video of him from last night. I enjoyed spending the past few days with this legend.

To view this video please CLICK HERE

Thanks for that Scott, that was great.

 

[caddata]

Speaking of Coop, below is a video of him....

Thanks Scott. That's a priceless video. Six minutes and the history of home satellite TV is told.

It's a shame that a hobby, developed by a couple hundred guys with our same interests, was consumed in a hostile takeover (in 1986) by the "small" dish networks and turned into the industry we see today. The hobbists developed the technology and implemented it for the common good, only to have it snatched away by greedy corporations.

The video corrected some of my foggy memory. Coop and Taylor Howard developed the homebrew receiver and Hayden McCullough developed the "8 Ball" redwood spherical antenna.

Thanks again for the video.

Harold

 

[c4net]

Anyone else got old satellite stories from the early days? Should start a satellite nostalgia thread

YES WE SHOULD!

Maaan, I thought I was the only one still around with sweet memories of the early days....I'M HAVING FLASHBACKS!

Yeah Coop......what a giant of a innovator and motivator! I saw one of his videos in 1980...and that was IT! It was the catalyst that lit the fire in me that burns to this day! It showed him and a few others out under a dish......I believe it was an ADM ....trying and succeeding to haul in a Russian Molniya bird......no small feat (search "Molniya orbit" on Wiki for the fascinating details)

I started installing TVRO systems in Lafayette, La. in 1980 with Bob Brandt, another Coop disciple and TVRO pacesetter in these parts.

(He sold me a KIT to build a homebrew receiver! It came with the PCB's and HANDWRITTEN instructions .....I wish I could remember the name of it....seemed it was a hyphenated name, like 2 guys' last names. "Washburn" rings a bell for some reason. I was only 16 yrs. old (i.e. POOR), so he helped me find an old terrestrial microwave dish...a 2 piece unit with alum. bars running 1 direction. I had to line it with house screen held on by Liquid Nails!. I built my own polar mount on an old Pop-up trailer frame from scrap pipe! I bought an Andrew mount from a local Telecom Co. to adapt the dish to the mount....gotta find a pic of that morphadite! And for the Polarizer, I used a Radio Shak Antenna rotator that would rotate the ENTIRE LNA 90*! The dish mover was motorized and was 7' long! It attached near the edge of the dish! It even had a primitive sat. position indicator that had small light bulbs set in an arc on the panel just above the toggle switch...these would light up when the dish was at each satellite's location...man it's hard to believe that was cutting edge TVRO! The highlight of that experience was setting it up in the vacant lot down the street and watching Holmes vs. Cooney with all the neighbors...for FREE of course!)

We worked out of a The Video Store, where the Sony Betamax went for $1000! The dish we sold was an ADM 11' (with Optional 1' extensions to make it 13'), an "Earth Terminals" receiver...or was THAT where I remember the name Washburn from?.........Boy those were exciting times!

Charles Fournet

 

[starman345]

Thats great stuff Charles, thanks for sharing. I'd forgotten all about those long dish movers, I never had one but have seen them. We had hand crank dishes until about 1990, sounds pretty low tech now but back then running out to the dish in January wasn't a big deal....but, I was younger then too.
I see you have a GI 2750, nice unit. Do you remember Gary Kabetta? He used to sell "ice" lnbs all over the satellite arc, they were really cal-amps, hehe, he sucked me into paying big bucks for one. He used to sell the GI 2750 and called it the "king viper". He had a pseudo name for everything he sold, you never knew what brand you were going to get until it arrived.
Joe Overholt, I believe he was the originator of Shop At Home sold satellite equipment on his show and was a pretty cool guy. I bought a data feed system from him called Skylink. They uplinked files to Westar 4 24 hrs a day, I fed the files into my computer via a serial port in real time and made them available to callers to my BBS. He sold an upscale version of skylink called planet connect but it was too $$ for me. So....how many people here remember bulletin board systems?

 

[GreatFTA]

I remember several plans back then on the dishes. I too wanted to build one but the list of materials required materials that I had to travel to Memphis or Jackson (Miss) and it wasn't worth it.
Then one magazine had a ad for hobbists that wanted to build their own LNA, using Radio Shack parts and the "board" that had to be bought by them. I fell for that one and time I gather up all those parts and trying to learn to solder, I just chunked it.
If I did build that LNA and put it on that expensive Uniden reciever, I could had a major disaster!!!!

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

They uplinked files to Westar 4 24 hrs a day, I fed the files into my computer via a serial port in real time and made them available to callers to my BBS. He sold an upscale version of skylink called planet connect but it was too $$ for me. So....how many people here remember bulletin board systems?

I used Planet Connect for my BBS, which was a 4 line system called Cheers which was running RemoteAccess software. I had to run Desqview to get all the lines to work (first realy multitasking I guess)

Those were the days.

 

[starman345]

I used Planet Connect for my BBS, which was a 4 line system called Cheers which was running RemoteAccess software. I had to run Desqview to get all the lines to work (first realy multitasking I guess)

Those were the days.

Wow! a four line system, mine was only 1 for a few years, at the end I had two lines. What a nightmare it was, getting com ports and irqs assinged so everything would work. I ran the Omega BBS for about 7 years. I ran Wildcat software although I did try Remoteaccess and most of the others as well as I'm sure you did too. I still have the Desqveiw floppies and manual. I used the OS/2 operating system in the early years, it was the first real multitasking os that could actually time slice the cpu. You are right...those were the days!

 

[RVD420]

BBS


reminds me of when 300 bps modems were the sh*t.

 

[digiblur]

I used Planet Connect for my BBS, which was a 4 line system called Cheers which was running RemoteAccess software. I had to run Desqview to get all the lines to work (first realy multitasking I guess)

Those were the days.

Jeez...bringing back memories. I co-sys'd for a board running Renegade. Desqview was a dream come true!

I ran a nightly FidoNet node to pull the mail between two boards since I was a local call to both of those since they were long distance between the two. Had a crazy custom batch file that would swap the FrontDoor config files between the USRobotics HST modem and the V32bis modem at night.

That was the time I taught myself TurboPascal and started writing my first shareware programs including my big one that made it worldwide... TagDude. Amazing that I can still find it on Google today when it was designed back in the 286 days.