Anyone Heard of the "SelfSat" Satellite Antenna?

[IA6Newspath]

Hi all.

This evening, I stumbled upon a website advertising the SelfSat, a flat, rectangular satellite antenna that evidently can be used for Ku FTA reception. Has anyone ever heard of this thing? Judging from their website, it doesn't look like it's available in North America, but it looks like an interesting option for those interested in a discrete, fixed satellite Ku FTA setup.

 

[turbosat]

Never saw it, but that would sell like crazy over here if it works. I read the specs and it says linear polariztion, has built-in skew and elevation adjustments. If they really work here I would like to test one out.
Prob would be good for apartment dwellers looking for DBS services too.

 

[concord]

And mount it on a motor

Some japanese company was experimenting with phased-array "flat" antennas about 4-5yrs ago, don't know whatever came of them.... The idea would to use electronics to "move" focus on a selected sat, eliminating the need of a motor.

 

[Anole]

There are flat, electrically-tracking DBS antennas for motor homes and limousines.
And they are commercially available now.
But, they cost thousands of dollars to track one bird while in motion.

I didn't have the right plug-in loaded to see the web site above, and won't discuss the stupidity of vendors relying on web visitors having such plug-ins!
Suffice it to say, I didn't get the full story.

 

[rv1pop]

I installed several on mobiles --- oh yeah, they were 747-400's. Boeing has been using them for several years and were worth the cost ! ;} I had heard they were coming out for consumers, but I have not seen them yet. expect them to be high cost, especially if you want more than one bird in motion. We probably will never be able to get the exotic ones - not until they are no longer state of the art... 'Nuf said on that line. If you really want more info, try to check the Boeing Satellite website. I can not give a link, because my link WAS encrypted and password protected - now I am retired and have not tried for 2+ years.

 

[Stargazer]

I wonder why they don't use an antenna for satellite like they use with the wireless internet service providers. They use square panels and on the inside are several squares/circles on a board with a metal line connecting them all together. Wireless has the solid and mesh dishes similar to satellite as well and I know its a different frequency than what satellite uses.

 

[penguinsix]

Tad confused. Does this thing allow you to pick up all satellites at the same time (i.e. the same as a motorized dish) or is it just capable of receing 'any' satellite so long as it is pointed right. The user manual said something about skewing the flat dish manually on the pole, so I was kind of wondering how it would 'switch' between birds.

 

[Stargazer]

From my understanding it only picks up one orbital location (some refer to it as one satellite) at a time.

 

[mayennesat]

Hi all.

This evening, I stumbled upon a website advertising the SelfSat, a flat, rectangular satellite antenna that evidently can be used for Ku FTA reception. Has anyone ever heard of this thing? Judging from their website, it doesn't look like it's available in North America, but it looks like an interesting option for those interested in a discrete, fixed satellite Ku FTA setup.

Hi gang, yes we keep them in stock along with the Neovia flat plate.

 

[SatPhreak]

I have read about them on european sites, but they don't work quite as good as a regular dish of the same size. Since most of the major sats in europe are higher powered than our sats they won't work in NA due to being to small for FSS birds, and they only have universal type lnbs meaning they won't work on the high powered DSS sats here. They are only good for 1 sat at a time so a motor would be required for more than one sat.

They still sound like a good idea for discrete installs though. Maybe if they made a 1 metre it could be used here.

 

[qwert1515]

I looked at the specs: a Fortec Star 80 cm dish has a gain of 38.24 dB, the flat dish has a gain of only 33 dB. (3 dB is twice the gain)

So like SatPhreak said, they are good for Europe, but not for FTA in North America