Contest: Enter to Win an Amiko mini HD SE from Titanium Satellite - Ends 5/27/2014

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My first FTA system was probably a little different than most since I started in 1991 in Germany with a motor powered 1 meter prime focus with two lnb's, one for vertical and one for horizontal. It served me well. The main selling point at the time was the ability to get the British FTA channels and CNN. But there was a lot of excellent TV coming from the Scandinavian countries. Eventually I upgraded to a digital receiver. Actually I still own an analog/digital receiver that still functions!

Thanks for the contests, Brian
 
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My cheap cheap cheap system I bought in 2013, only to find out I needed a chainsaw to get 30W, the one bird I nearly have LOS for. A WorldDirect dish for $20, a WinTV Nova S2 for $20ish, and an X2 Premium for $60ish. Even if I don't win the Amiko I'll probably buy one soon since I'll be in a south-facing apartment in two months. My fiancee even agreed to the top floor so we can get LOS on 125W :)
 
I started my hobby in 2007 I got a twinhan 1020a plus a 1.2M dish I was pointing to those channels of Hispasat @ 30W and I also tested 97W and some other satellites, first I took me a lot of reading about what antenna to use, what LNB and stufs like that but now days is cool to see that I still use that antenna plus a few more and one huge Prime Focus yet to make it to work.

I always wanted to have an dish antenna since the late 80s but I was a kid back then so I had to wait until I grow up.
 
The free to air came to my attention since I was young(around 80's) my neighbor had a big bud dish antenna. One day looking in a place like "traders village" one guy offered to me one stuff that he told me is to "steal the signal" from one Bud dish.. What??:confused: so, you can watch everything While your Neighbor is watching..What??:eek: the device looked like “ears rabbit antenna” and just you need to aim directly to the bud to steal de signal.:rolleyes:. Obvious i was a young and I never see anything. Today I think that these guy just fooled me and get my money:mad: ..I got a little "stone" into my shoes
:p
Since a while I did testing too many Fixed ku dish to catch satellites and now I am testing C band I am trying to reach the Arc Belt in Both;)..

Coolsat receiver was my first FTA baby receiver still using
 
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My first true fta system was in 2011 with the openbox s10 and an old starchoice 30" dish, soon to be followed by a 10' bud from "around the corner". Great to have all these online sites. I would never have gotten very far if it was pre-internet.
stephen
 
I was introduced to FTA in early 2005 by a coworker who had a Pansat receiver and a 70cm dish. I was hooked and ordered a Pansat 3500, a Fortec 80cm dish, and a Stab HH90 motor. After I finally got the system properly setup even my wife started to take notice. There are now 12 FTA dishes feeding various receivers here in the house and my wife says I spend more time working on the satellite dishes than I do watching TV. She's probably right.

Ernie
 
Bought a 10' Perfect 10 mesh w/Toshiba 1820 IRD in 1993, subscribed to packages from various providers for a few years, then just used it for analog feeds and ITC stuff till about 2007 when this forum introduced me to the digital world.

Then I got a Visionsat IV200 and a 90cm 3ABN offset w/DG380 motor, planted it out by my BUD...and they started breeding. Big happy family out in my yard now, and still growing.

Thanks to Mr. Titanium for the giveaway.
 
My dad and I got a c band dish and reciever from RadioShack A Memorex reciever and venture 9' buttenhook dish with mover. I liked watching the wild feeds of Star Track the Next Generation. then I bought a satworks reciever to watch the digital side of things. I miss most is the watching of wild feeds of shows that don't make it to fta tv.
 
My first FTA setup was a 1.2 meter channel master dish with a fixed non-penetrating roof mount, back in April 2009.

I used it to get some c-band on 91w. I probably should have started with some KU-band stuff with a dish that small, but it was a lot of fun going for c-band on a small dish; I learned a lot... :-)

Since then I got a few 10 foot c-band dishes setup, in place of that small dish.

sgs
 
I got into FTA back in 2009 with a used coolsat 5000 and a universal LNBF. I spent the better half of the day outside trying to get 91w. Finally I got a signal and scanned in 91w and after that I was hooked.
 
Hmmm.. Well this is kind of hard to say because I’m not real sure.
Back in the 80’s we had a big dish, I think it was maybe a 7 foot C-band. We subscribed and got a potpourri package. There were also a LOT of free channels back then as well.
But I wasn’t in charge of the dish (or any thing else for that matter) so I guess it wasn’t technically mine.

Moving on to the 90’s I moved on to another relationship and it was again pretty much the same as the first time so this also wasn’t really MY stuff. It puked out and went to rust anyway.

And in the 2000’s we had KU FTA which I also did not operate, mainly since I was never home, I traveled for work, extensively. Sometime in 2008 I retired for health reasons, we split up and I was left with some stuff I didn’t know anything about and didn’t understand.

I let it sit around not knowing what to do with it, I was seconds away from throwing it all to the curb but then I decided to google the stuff and found myself here. It was in 2009 that I actually first took over the stuff and started trying to learn how to do FTA stuff. There was a tuner card in the PC and that was my first FTA system. Over the years since then I’ve purchased several tuner cards and several STB tuners.

It was a rough ride and it took me a loooooooong time to learn this stuff but now I think I do OK with it.

I sure do miss the days when Equity had a bazillion channels going.
 
Early 2006. Got the Pansat 2700. Decided to do the install in the middle of winter. Not my best choice but i finally got G23 after weeks of freezing outside! The cold suddenly went away when i got that first signal and i always remembered which way the skew was after that :D
 
I bought my first FTA receiver and dish in 2008, to get all the good free channels on 123W, at that time. Soon added a second dish from CraigsList for History and Biography on 101w. Now I have 8 LNBFs on 5 dishes, including a ten foot C-band with 3 LNBFs.
 
Back in 1989, C band, analog receivers. Dont even recall the brands back then. Then I took a break until 2004 when I started with a 39' Fortec dish and a Pansat 2500.
Then I moved to a house with a bigger backyard and have now a motorized 6' Fortec C Band and a static 39" Ku. Willing to go one step forward to a polar mounted 8' but have not been able to find a comercially available unit at the right price.
 
I installed my first c-band system in 1984. I have upgraded it many times over the years but I'm still using the original dish, a Raydx 10.5 footer. It is a great dish and I don't miss much used with my Elite STB and driven by a 4DTV receiver.

Joe
 
well i had c band dish way back with my GI 2400 and got interested in a new type receiver that was coming out it wasn't the first but it was interesting i think a person called Bob Smaller sold this receiver i think it was called a Smaller 6600 ( i suspected it was a rebranded dvb receiver ) that you could change the freq in manually. my forage into fta happend a couple years later first with a coolsat then a pansat 2500 receiver it was over then been interested in fta since
 
Started in 2005 when KWorld sent me a DVBS-100 instead of the ATSC PC card I wanted. Came here
and several other sites looking for info. Starting scrounging free sat equip off Craigslist and haven't
had any cable or sat subs since. I appreciate all the help from the FTA community and try to help when
I think my info is worthwhile.
 
I had my first FTA system back in 2000. I used a Uniden C/Ku band receiver that someone gave me. They didn't use it anymore and had used it with their C-Band dish. I had a Primestar dish and used it to pick up the NBC feeds and some wild feeds. I remember seeing Tom Brokaw during the commercial breaks. They rolled a big desk around to him during a commercial and he would type on a computer and then they would roll it away as they counted down to coming back on the air again. I believe it was when they had content up on 101.
 
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