Picked up some interesting equipment recently - any pros here know what I can do with it?

bwackjack

New Member
Original poster
Apr 27, 2024
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Canada
I was recently given a bunch of Bell satellite equipment that I believe was intended for use in an apartment building. I believe what it is is a stacker/destacker and some other associated equipment. I've uploaded the datasheets to Archive.org, because I could find next to no information online: Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

I'm most interested in the SCU-2P3M and the SCD-2P3E, the former being the stacker and the latter being the destacker. A few questions... I wonder if these could be used for stacking signals from 2 FTA linear ku-band LNBs for legal FTA satellite programming... And I wonder what kind of receiver I'd need to use. The datasheet for the destacker says it selects whether to use satellite A or B based on "Echostar Control Word" - I have no idea what that is exactly. I'm hoping that it's secretly just a normal 22KHz switch and they're just trying to hide that from me :) Any thoughts? I'm mostly interested in this because I love messing with stuff I'm not supposed to have / don't normally get to see/use, rather than because I actually need a stacker/destacker.
 
Old articles floating about indicate these were for stacking Bell and an apartment lobby camera feed (eg. VHF channel 3) and sending it the rooms where the destacker would separate the signals back out for either the Bell receiver or the VHF input of the resident's TV set for tuning in the CCTV.

It likely has a 22KHz switch integrated for understanding how to address the LNBF for tuning Bell.

I would question whether or not you could "stack" multiple LNBF feeds behind the stacker. I guess it would depend on how you connect the feeds to present them in and the capabilities the stacker switch has in separating them. From the archive docs you uploaded, doesn't look like it would work IMHO.

HTH
Byron