Does G28 at 89w have an old name? I'm re-programming the Pansat2500a in the bedroom and it has OLD satellite names in it. Which one was 89w?
Old Name for G28
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Actually it was Telstar 4.....there was no Telstar 8
T4 blew up and it was replaced with IA8 (IA had bought Telstar before that)
T4 blew up and it was replaced with IA8 (IA had bought Telstar before that)
I suppose, in name as T8, was never technically in orbit.. 
Telstar 4, yes.. forgot about that one.
Telstar 4, yes.. forgot about that one.
found the info on that
In 2003, Telstars 4–8 and 13 — Loral Skynet's North American fleet — were sold to Intelsat. Telstar 4 suffered complete failure prior to the handover. The others were renamed the Intelsat Americas 5, 6, etc. At the time of the sale, Telstar 8 was still under construction by Space Systems/Loral, and it was finally launched on June 23, 2005 by Sea Launch.
In 2003, Telstars 4–8 and 13 — Loral Skynet's North American fleet — were sold to Intelsat. Telstar 4 suffered complete failure prior to the handover. The others were renamed the Intelsat Americas 5, 6, etc. At the time of the sale, Telstar 8 was still under construction by Space Systems/Loral, and it was finally launched on June 23, 2005 by Sea Launch.
I remember that...only had my analog TRX-120 at the time. I thought something happened on my end 'till I heard about it on the news. -Had the same 10 footer I do now!
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Actually, the Telstar 4, was just our TVRO name for the sat, since we needed 2 digit names like T4 for our receivers. I think the sat we called T4 was actually Telstar 402R {R=replacement for T402}. Never made a whole lot of sense to me how we TVRO'ers (and or the receiver manufacturers) came up with those common names. It all seemed to make sense up through Telstar 3. Back in the 80s/90s, I think there were Telstar 301, 302, 303, which were T-1, T-2, and t-3 respectively, which all seemed to make sense, but then when they were replaced,, they started doing strange things. Ie they came up with the new Telstar 401 and 402, and Telstar 401 became T1 on most of our receivers, since it replaced 301, but somehow Telstar 402 for some reason became Telstar 4, which didn't make sense to me. I still have T1 programmed for the 96/97 slot.
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Its always fun to find old satellite charts and see what satellites were in the common orbital slots in the past. Also, the Clarke Belt was not nearly as crowded years back as it is now.
I guess that slot was an unlucky slot. The original 402 never made it to geosync orbit, and is one of the few such sats to have burned up on re-entry, some 10 years after it was launched. Then the above replacement failed (but is still up there).
I remember when T4 failed, because PBS had to make a quick move, I think to T6. Interestingly, after the sale to Intelsat, even though we were calling those sats IA 5, 6, and 7 , I think that really IA8 was the first to officially be an IA sat. I think that 5,6 and 7 were actually Intelsat 3005, 3006, and 3007. But I think now the new Galaxy names are official, at least based on what NASA-OIG called them, and now Spacetrack calls them. Spacetrack now refers to T5, T6, and T7 as being the old names, but didn't when they actually were Telstars.
Since I still use a Uniden analog receiver to control my 10' dish, I custom named all the satellites in the memory. I was going crazy trying to remember 3 different designators. The old 2 digit, the new name and degree. Finally, I put the new ID and degree with it.
Now for example it's, G1 to call and G15 133W in the description etc. I helps me keep everything straight.
Now for example it's, G1 to call and G15 133W in the description etc. I helps me keep everything straight.
You're lucky you have the option to have a description line.
On my Drake, I now have:
C-BAND
C4, G1, C3, T7, G9, G5, E8, G8, M2, M6, E1, E2, S2, F9, S4, G4, T1, G3, T6, G7, T4, S3, G2, F2, S6, S9 A5, A7, A6
Ku-BAND
T7, K2,T9,E1, K7, K1, K9, T1, T6, G7, K8, K5, G4, B6, G6, K3, T4, K6, A5
Talk about being confused relative to what designator corresponds to what sat. I don't think that there is a single designator there that actually relates to a current satellite, except maybe for T7, which is G27, which used to be T7.
Oh, and I guess G3 is still G3, and T6. Everything else is made up.
Some of the above are obvious, like G1, and T7, and G9, which were old sats occupying the slot in question, but many were caused by me just randomly grabbing an un-used designator for new satse, or by my receiver running out of sat designators, forcing me to delete old sat names and using it for new sats.
Anyway, having a description capability would be nice. I think that I can give descriptive names to channels, but not to sats. When I chose a sat to got to, all I have is the 2 digit designator, and it gets confusing some times. I usually try to keep AMC sats designated as Satcom "S", and keep the old Telstars as T sats, but I've long since run out of designators, so everything is getting scrambled now. I'm just about to give up on the Drake and either switch to my Monty (which I think is more capable in that respect), or switch to a VBOX type thing to move my dish. But I won't do the VBOX thing until all the analog is gone.
Back in the late 90's when I got my big dish, the satellites were already messed up due to new names and using some old names for current sats. I couldn't program about 1/4 of the sats to the two symbol names that Orbit magazine used, because my receiver had a fixed list of designators that was unchangeable without buying a new chip and burning it with the new designators. I named all the ones I could that matched orbit and just randomly picked others from my receiver as I programed the new name ones in. Then I just listed the name I called it at the top of the main channel page in Orbit. I had to list them again every month in Orbit because my exsignificant other could never remember what they were without looking them up.
I like my Toshiba TRX-120, and my Uniden UST 7700a positioner, for the same reason: You can scroll though the whole alphabet, and numbers 0-9 for designators, rather than having to stick to a pre-programmed list! :up
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In addition to my Drake being somewhat crippled with respect to limited designators, some of those designators aren't even unique. For example, the Drake came out about in the time frame when the Anik sats were changing designators of "A" for Anik-D, to "E" for the Anik-E series, so it has 2 designators for Anik sats, ie both A and E. However they both vector to the same memory locations, so that if for example, you define A1, and then later define E1, you have then wiped out A1. Same is true for C and F, since the Satcom-C sats replaced the Satcom-F sats. This makes it doubly confusing when trying to pick an unused sat designator.
This whole discussion is making me thing that I should retire the old Drake, and switch to my Monty 50/55. Only thing is that I've been using the Drake for about 13+ years now, and am familiar with the functions, and would have to re-learn how to use the Monty, as well as re-program my JP1 remote, etc. But the Monty also has the advantage of having direct entry of frequency, whereas with my Drake, I have to use a chart that interprets an incomprehensible relationship between a wierd 2 byte word and frequency, and it generally isn't very accurate. Also, the power supply on my Drake seems to be slowly dying, as the Ku LNB voltage seems to be slowly dropping. Yeah, I think this discussion has convinced me that I need to retire the Drake.
This whole discussion is making me thing that I should retire the old Drake, and switch to my Monty 50/55. Only thing is that I've been using the Drake for about 13+ years now, and am familiar with the functions, and would have to re-learn how to use the Monty, as well as re-program my JP1 remote, etc. But the Monty also has the advantage of having direct entry of frequency, whereas with my Drake, I have to use a chart that interprets an incomprehensible relationship between a wierd 2 byte word and frequency, and it generally isn't very accurate. Also, the power supply on my Drake seems to be slowly dying, as the Ku LNB voltage seems to be slowly dropping. Yeah, I think this discussion has convinced me that I need to retire the Drake.
I have a Drake ESR-1224 that I used before The Toshiba 120. I quit using it because the sound on non-VCII channels sometimes made wierd popping noises, and I watched more unscrambled stuff (feeds) than anything else. I kinda remember the designator thing too about the A's and E's etc.
I can't remember the features of the other 1x24 Drakes, but I bought the 1824 because at the time it was one of only 2 or 3 receivers that had a selection of audio and video bandwidths that were necessary to get good reception on PBS and one of the other networks (perhaps ABC?). I think the Monty 50/55/90/95 series, and some of the GI receivers also were capable. Previously, I was using an Echo-7000, which is the same as a HT-8+ I think. I actually liked the user interface of the Echo a lot better, however the bandwidth problems on a couple channels convinced me to replace it with the Drake, and I eventually got a backup Monty-55. Those Toshiba receivers had some nice features, as I remember, but at the time I was in a forum that mainly had Drake and Monty users, so I didn't have anyone to recommend them.
But with my old Echo receiver, some of the channels had very wide deviation audio, somewhere in the 400 KHz range, that would cause some strange distortion on receivers that only had 200-300 KHz audio bandwidths. Also, analog video could range from bandwidths down around 20 to above 30 MHz if I remember right, and the Echo receiver gave poor video when the bandwidth was wrong. The Drake has been nice in terms of reception, but annoying in terms of lack of a few features that I would really have liked, such as direct frequency tuning, and the poor selection of Ku formats. There are actually frequencies that cannot be tuned on most of the Ku formats available.
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