I'm surrounded by unused satellite dishes

[Magic Static]

Since becoming a member here I have looked at a gazillion pictures and read a bunch too. I've become good at looking for satellite stuff and at a glance can often tell it isn't used anymore.More and more I see, and a lot of it for the asking I'm sure. There are some gems out there. For instance there are two cband dishes 10 blocks from here at a bowling alley with Chap Orthos on them. Those dishes havn't seen action in a decade I bet. I've got my eye on a couple commercial Ku dishes, one is total junk but the other looks great. But every where I go now I see abandoned dishes. I need to get a list of the good stuff and start skimmin some cream off the top here. I don't know of anybody around me that has a dish farm. Never seen a one. But I'm thinking I can have some of the best for mine

 

[toucan-man]

"Yes, Mr Sims, there's only two words in this whole wide world worth hearing: satellite dish."
Al Pacino, in Scent of a Woman (paraphrased)

I got a nice C-band lnbf from a dish that was no good but I took anyway. In ten years a lot of this stuff may be mostly gone, and you're always just one hail storm away from needing spares. One way to look at it.

 

[jaytay]

I'm doing the same thing - lots of stuff that seems ripe for the asking. I see a satellite dish mounted on an old gas station, and go up to get the contact information of the real estate company to see if I can pull the dish down. I also visited one of the local TV stations one day. I couldn't get in the front door because it was secured, so was going to walk around back to see if I could find anyone. I ran into the chief engineer back by the trucks! He said that they were going to get rid of a few of them, and we exchanged business cards. I can't wait to see what they want to retire.

 

[empiretc]

only problem around here is people always want $$$$$. it can be sitting there unused- basically junk, but as soon as you ask they think it is worth something and people usually get upset when you offer the price of old iron.

 

[Corrado]

Last year with all the bad press of the C band programming ending, many of the remaining BUDs in my area disappeared. Coincidence? I knew some were still operational because they were sometimes pointed in different positions in the arc.

Other than my own, there are none left in my local neighborhood. Even the difficult to remove ones on top of buildings are gone. This year, 3 more I was aware of were taken down this Spring. Too bad. I know of one long abandoned Paraclipse on my daily commute and another ancient dish near the river behind some trees. Which was the first BUD I ever saw, funny now because it's nearly the last.

 

[Steve Mehs]

Personally I don’t ‘get’ the whole FTA thing and have no interest in it, but some of you guys would be in heaven if you could ride along with me on Thursdays. My Thursday delivery route has me in the middle of nowhere and I probably see every type of consumer dish known to man. Especially down on the rez. Years ago when Adelphia was in that area they refused to wire the Indian Reservation for cable, when Time Warner took over they made a proposal to the Seneca Nation but they wanted nothing to do with it so it’s nothing but satellite TV and satellite internet for 26 square miles. On the rez, I pass by a dozen or so Primestar dishes, tons and tons of C-Band dishes, dishes with DTN written on them, whatever they may be for, and various other dishes, mostly just sitting there rotting as nearly every house has a D* or E* dish on it.

I could probably make a small fortune knocking on doors paying a few bucks for the dishes and reselling them on eBay or on here.

 

[Stargazer]

I have collected several dishes over the years that are of larger size (Hughesnet, WildBlue, StarBand, Dish Network SuperDish, now some Skyways due to DSL lauch, Primestar) and they are piling up. I figure the worst case scenario is that I can recycle them if there never ends up being a need for them but I always have this hope that there will be a great need for them such as FreeDBS. I'd hate to get rid of any of them seeing how much it costs to ship these dishes and the cost to buy some of them if you had to buy one. I can see the prices increase on some of these dishes if the demand for such as service such as FreeDBS becomes high.

 

[Cosmokramer11]

I hate when dishes are left for garbage or scrap. Thats how I got my Primestar 84E. I saw it for years at this person's house then one day I was walking and I saw it on the floor on their property. So I knocked on the door and asked them for it they said sure take it.