Ever Used a REALLY Big Dish for FTA?

[cyberham]

Since it's a holiday (in Canada: Victoria Day) and I have some leisure time, can anybody fascinate us with stories of having access to a very large dish to try receiving FTA satellite TV? My definition of a VLD is something, say, bigger than 15+ feet in diameter. An amateur radio group in Japan was temporarily allowed to use a 60-foot commercial dish for Earth-Moon-Earth contacts. It resulted in fun for those who used it and those who were able to have 2-way contacts with Japan using this mode. Plus it was technically educational too, which is always a bonus.

60-foot commercial dish used for amateur radio at 8J1AXA from 2008~2010:

 

[turbosat]

It's a nice dream!

 

[SatelliteAV]

Have connected many FTA receivers to 10, 20, 30 and even 40 meter dishes at uplink facilities to feed a turn. Never have tried anything below the horizon or out of footprint, just doing business.

Interesting to roll-in attenuation rather than amplify signals just to avoid swamping the tuner. Nice situation to deal with!

 

[Tron]

One of these days, I'm going to take my microHDs over to an engineer friend of mine at a local network affiliate and have a little blind scanning fun.

Problem is, after I do that, I'll surely want bigger dishes at home.