Use for a 'trashed' dish

[ampulman]

I recently was given a 'recycled' sat dish. It is a 36", dual-LNB (one Is labeled Ku type with two feeds; the other has no I.D. but is shaped like a cat's eye). The dish is labeled "DirectTV World".

What I'm wondering is whether or not the dish could be used/modified to monitor any private/military or other sats (not interested in pirating TV), and what might be involved in doing so.

Also, if any such sats could be monitored from a ground position as I'm not into ladders these days.

AM

 

[n8myc]

here's a couple of links you can try...
www.lyngsat.com
www.satelliteguys.us
You can use that for FTA ,free to air like on Galaxy 10r KU there are a lot of free tv channels. When on lyngsat click on 61W to 160W America. There are also a lot of wild news and sports feeds to be found. Good luck

 

[daleduke17]

What kind of receiver would you need to receive the FTA channels on the satellites?

Also, what would some of the FTA channels be?

 

[brandon]

Point at IA-6 for tons of feeds. Nothing better than watching raw video from news helos.

Get a receiver that can do blindscanning. Most common SR for news feeds are 3979 and 4232 but they can show up anywhere. www.sadoun.com is probably the best place to buy satellite receivers, their support is very good. I like the Coolsat for blindscans but I also have a Fortec and it does a good job too.

 

[prcguy]

Your describing the dish that Directv uses for US International programming on G3C. Some are very elliptical and others are more round. The center LNB is a standard single linear pol unit that is compatible with free to air Ku and the LNB off to the side is a dual pol Directv circular feed. The elliptical dish would be a bit of a pain for free to air as the entire dish gets skewed when adjusting cross pol for each satellite you point at and even the round one would need it’s feed tweaked every time you want to see the other pol. It’s probably worth more for its intended purpose and you would be better off finding a cheap used (under $50) 1m Ku dish with dual pol LNB for free to air.
prcguy

 

[John_M]

A sattelite dish is a three dimensional parabola. For more information on parabolas you can look in an algebra book. Every ray hitting the three dimensional parabola bounces off the surface and collects at the focal point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_dish

Here is what a two dimensional parabola looks like:

http://regentsprep.org/Regents/math/conics/LPara.htm

 

[nerdboy]

now i have a question,sorry if maybe i missed this but i'm alittle new at this and still tring to cover all the info, I have a old sony sat dish on the top of the roof and just wondering if it would make a nice scanner antenna. Any info would be nice.thanks