Any feedhunters here?

messymess

Was looking to get a satellite dish + motor and decoder to do some feed hunting with. I don't want to mount the dish to my house so would have to use a stand ... probably 80cm is the biggest I can go and I was hoping to get a transparent dish.

What advice can people offer or what kit would you recommend? I was thinking of a dreambox 7020 for the decoder.

watty

80cm is near usless for feeds Most are 7/8 FEC so you need a 110cm dish minimum (need more signal).

You need a 422 receiver.
You ideally want a receiver with built in real spectrum analyser to find transponders and symbol rates, most cheap blind scan are fake, they simply spend hour or so trying all the possible frequencies and symbol rates, this is poor for feeds as they use lower symbol rates and smaller frequency steps quite often.

see Atlantic and Europe frequencys on www.lyngsat.com and check foot prints.

you need clear view to south west and south east.

There are about 21 to 22 sat positions possible 42E to 45W in MidWest of Ireland.
Some feeds would need a 1.8m dish with elevation motor as they will sometimes use inclined orbit satellites.

Depends if you are hunting for short lived feeds or watching sport on long lived feeds listed by others on Internet.

If it's basically for free sport/football you are wasting your time, you need a subscription.

See http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=622

A Dreambox is a feed that someone else found solution, not feed hunting solution.

Forget about 80cm Transparent dish if you interested.

Apogee

messymess wrote: »

Was looking to get a satellite dish + motor and decoder to do some feed hunting with. I don't want to mount the dish to my house so would have to use a stand ... probably 80cm is the biggest I can go and I was hoping to get a transparent dish.

What advice can people offer or what kit would you recommend? I was thinking of a dreambox 7020 for the decoder.

80cm will be fine for the majority of feeds, but a transparent dish will act more like a 60/70cm dish. You can always mount a solid dish a foot or two above ground and paint it to camouflage it.

An AZBOX can decode 4:2:2 signals. Or you could use a PCI DVB-S2 card in a PC which is a cheaper approach if you already have a PC. The 'Foreign Satellite' forum has more information on feeds, azboxs etc.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=622

Newtown90

Ya get a 1.1m or 1.2m... I have a 80cm and it struggles to get anything weak...

Get a good blind scan box with 4:2:2 like the AZ box!....

watty

Glenviewjf wrote: »

Get a good blind scan box with 4:2:2 like the AZ box!....

It's not a real blind scan. No spectrum Analyser. It just goes at user defined steps and tries all the common symbol rates. OK to find ordinary TV transponders. Too slow to find feeds, and likely to miss them.

A PC card does the same. But most can't manage the motor current
Five solutions for PC card and Motor:

• PC card with separate Disk drive power connector for LNB/Motor power
• External box power booster
• IF loop through on a €40 setbox and use it as a the satellite positioner.
• Separate +18V feed to motor
• 36V actuator and external USALS diseqc box to drive it.

A cheaper solution than a "true" Blind Scan receiver is:
a Satellite Meter with Spectrum analyser to find the Transponders
also
an Analogue Satellite tuner is then tuned to that transponder and it's Baseband Output fed to a 100MHz sampling rate PC/Laptop USB 'scope that can work as Spectrum analyser up to 40MHz.

For example if the peak is at 13.6MHz on PC USB spectrum analyser when you tune in the transponder found by the meter, via the analogue receiver then on your PC card or AZ box you enter the transponder found by meter and symbol rate of 13600 ksym/s.

This takes a few minutes per satellite rather than the 60minutes + for an inaccurate sat box blind scan.

Manc-Red

messymess wrote: »

Was looking to get a satellite dish + motor and decoder to do some feed hunting with. I don't want to mount the dish to my house so would have to use a stand ... probably 80cm is the biggest I can go and I was hoping to get a transparent dish.

What advice can people offer or what kit would you recommend? I was thinking of a dreambox 7020 for the decoder.

I'm on an 88cm & on occasion have pulled in weak signals barely. - Not good enough.

What are your main interests TV wise?

Apogee

watty wrote: »

It's not a real blind scan. No spectrum Analyser. It just goes at user defined steps and tries all the common symbol rates. OK to find ordinary TV transponders. Too slow to find feeds, and likely to miss them.

Have you used one?

watty

Not the AZ box. But two other "so called" blind scan boxes and PC cards in ProgDVB. The approach does find feed some of the time if they are long lived enough, "fat enough" Transponders and you have a lot of patience!

ALL boxes that don't have a spectrum Analyser do blind scan by simply trying different frequencies and symbol rates. The better it does it, the slower. The faster it goes, the more likely it only finds "fat" transponders with lots of regular TV channels.

The better boxes let you edit the symbol rates to try and the frequency step. Still rubbish compared to Professional €2000+ boxes with a built in FFT/Spectrum analyser. The only half affordable "true" blind scan is the "hobbyist" method of a cheap professional satellite meter Spectrum Analyser, cheap 100MHz USB scope attachment for laptop with Spectrum analyser and an Analogue Receiver with a D2MAC or similar "baseband" output. (or add one).

Apogee

watty wrote: »

Not the AZ box. But two other "so called" blind scan boxes and PC cards in ProgDVB. The approach does find feed some of the time if they are long lived enough, "fat enough" Transponders and you have a lot of patience!

So no actual hands-on experience with the AzBox. Which other blindscan receivers have you used that are so awful?

messymess

Thanks for the responses guys. I'm not particularly interested in watching TV it has to be said, just more 'interesting' streams that aren't necessarily directly aimed at the public. I believe there's data streams knocking about that I can setup a TUN/TAP interface on my linux box to look at to

watty

By all accounts the AZ box is great "hobbyist" "open" linux based box. I'm not trying to knock it. Just suggesting that if someone was really serious about feed hunting, it has limitations in how it does a Blind Scan. As has any probably any other box under €2,000.

Anyway it seems the OP is NOT wanting "Blind scans" for TV Feeds. I'd say most of the traffic he wants is regular and listed, not occasional feeds. I don't think feed hunting / Blindscan would likely find the OP anything unlisted of the kind he wants.

Apogee wrote: »

So no actual hands-on experience with the AzBox. Which other blindscan receivers have you used that are so awful?

They are not "awful"

The point I'm making is that NO non-professional receiver (i.e. less than a few €K) is a true "blind scan". True Blind Scan uses FFT (spectrum analysis). The "hobby"/Domestic boxes don't have the DSP /CPU horsepower or even the correct interface to a tuner head to do it.

They really just try a lot of possible frequencies and symbol rates. This strategy works well for "fat transponders" with lots of TV channels. It can be a poor strategy for feeds as they are often SCPC and thus a small frequency step.

OP:
Monitoring data streams as you suggest may be illegal in many jurisdictions as they are often not technically "public broadcast". In the past encyrption wasn't used much. More modern systems are encrypted.

These are NOT feeds at all in the sense that people normally mean. The normal usage of "Feed" is news report, studio link or Sports event, sometimes in 4.2.2 format. Sometimes (especially regular Sports Feeds) the PowerVu or other Broadcaster only encryption is used.


You'll find a lot of them actually listed in www.lyngsat.com and other places as they are not of temporary duration as a Feed is. They are simply data streams. No need for a Blind Scan receiver or 4.2.2

Apogee

I've owned 4 different models of blindscan receivers. None of them takes 60 mins to do a scan (more like 10-15mins) and they all find SCPC channels with symbol rates <2000. I see no real point in advocating the use of an expensive spectrum analyser which offers little additional benefit. The vast majority of posters on the various feedhunter sites use blindscan receivers, and only a tiny handful use SAs.

Apogee

messymess wrote: »

Thanks for the responses guys. I'm not particularly interested in watching TV it has to be said, just more 'interesting' streams that aren't necessarily directly aimed at the public. I believe there's data streams knocking about that I can setup a TUN/TAP interface on my linux box to look at to

Two sites worth a look for data streams:
http://www.hoka.com/

http://www.uhf-satcom.com/

watty

Apogee wrote: »

I've owned 4 different models of blindscan receivers. None of them takes 60 mins to do a scan (more like 10-15mins) and they all find SCPC channels with symbol rates <2000. I see no real point in advocating the use of an expensive spectrum analyser which offers little additional benefit. The vast majority of posters on the various feedhunter sites use blindscan receivers, and only a tiny handful use SAs.

Yes you can scan in 15mins. It's not very thorough though.

By definition you never know about what you didn't find.

15min x 20 satellites = 300mins = 5 hrs.

The vast majority use consumer Blind Scan because it's €50 to €300. A spectrum analyser approach is €800 to €8,000

The vast majority of posters on any site are hardly gurus.

Apogee

watty wrote: »

Yes you can scan in 15mins. It's not very thorough though.

By definition you never know about what you didn't find.

So what? I can compare what any of the 4 blindscan receivers pick up, and what I see on a spectrum analyzer and the difference over a period of years is neglible. This notion that there are hundreds of feeds popping in and out of existence which a blindscan receiver fails to find is bunkum.

watty wrote:

15min x 20 satellites = 300mins = 5 hrs.

If you want to go scanning 20 satellites one after the other, you should consider a different hobby.

watty wrote:

The vast majority use consumer Blind Scan because it's €50 to €300. A spectrum analyser approach is €800 to €8,000

And a waste of money for the most part.

watty wrote:

The vast majority of posters on any site are hardly gurus.

Roger Bunney doesn't use a spectrum analyzer for his feedhunting. Would you consider him a 'guru'?

watty

Roger Bunney is a TV DX enthusiast some time column writer from the 1970s. I read his columns for years. Does that make him an expert on Satellite technology?

It all depends on how serious a hobby looking for "feeds" is.

It's like the difference between a €80 Bearcat Scanner and full HF spectrum SDR. Don't knock what you don't use. If you are serious about feed hunting you want to scan about 10 satellites in 5 Minutes. Not spend 15min to 60min per satellite.

But it's a hobby, and people have to make their own decisions as to time and money they put in. Some folks spend more money dickying up their car as a hobby than a high end professional receiver.

Apogee

watty wrote: »

Roger Bunney is a TV DX enthusiast some time column writer from the 1970s. I read his columns for years. Does that make him an expert on Satellite technology?

You tell me. What constitutes a 'guru'?

watty wrote:

It's like the difference between a €80 Bearcat Scanner and full HF spectrum SDR. Don't knock what you don't use. If you are serious about feed hunting you want to scan about 10 satellites in 5 Minutes. Not spend 15min to 60min per satellite.

Which receiver will blindscan a satellite in 5 mins? Which blindscan receiver takes 60 mins?

watty wrote:

But it's a hobby, and people have to make their own decisions as to time and money they put in. Some folks spend more money dickying up their car as a hobby than a high end professional receiver.

Which receivers have built-in spectrum analyzers?

watty

Martin Pickering (Satcure) is a Satellite Guru (of sorts).

Domestic Blind scan speed depends on MHz of frequency step and how many Symbol rates. 15 mins is typical

Only Professional gear in Earthstations. Hobby solution is signal meter with Spectrum analyser to find transponders and then 1Mhz to 40MHz cheap test spectrum analyser on an analogue receiver (one with output to feed a D2MAC decoder is good), tuned to Transponder found with Signal meter. Checking 10 satellites in 15 mins possible...

Apogee

watty wrote: »

Martin Pickering (Satcure) is a Satellite Guru (of sorts).

Domestic Blind scan speed depends on MHz of frequency step and how many Symbol rates. 15 mins is typical

Not 60 mins then.

watty wrote:

Only Professional gear in Earthstations. Hobby solution is signal meter with Spectrum analyser to find transponders and then 1Mhz to 40MHz cheap test spectrum analyser on an analogue receiver (one with output to feed a D2MAC decoder is good), tuned to Transponder found with Signal meter. Checking 10 satellites in 15 mins possible...

So you can't name any.

watty

Out of my price league ..
I'm sure if money is no object Tanberg, PBI, NDS, pacific Satellite, Tiernan, Inverto or Motorola sell them. Most of the "professional" boxes are ASI output for head ends and don't have FFT based search. You'd want the more expensive boxes with diagnostics and search used in Earth Stations and Monitoring systems such as GCHQ.

Typical professional IRD http://www.inverto.tv/products/product.php?section=2&id=147&PHPSESSID=5cbf97ae813df8fb52542416cd6cc833 No idea if it's "ordinary" Blind search or FFT based.

Loads of Motorola stuff (No idea if any of it does FFT search ) http://www.amt.com/store/index_mfr.php?MfrID=2

The Hobbyest solution is old second hand Promax to find Transponders etc as described above

This a nice new one http://www.promaxprolink.com/tvgenerators/tvexplorer-hd+.htm
Includes Spectrum Analyser. 5MHz to 1000MHz and 950MHz to 2100MHz
Auto detection of transponders/Multiplexs and all parameters
About €6,200

Earth stations and Listening Posts have Rack mount IRDs with similar features or more, but no screen. More Expensive

I've used an older model of this http://www.promaxprolink.com/prolink/prolink4.htm

I have myself a HP141T Spectrum Analyser with 110MHz Plug in and loan of 1200MHz and 18GHz Plug ins. (yes, it can do MMDS and Ku WITHOUT LNBs!).

I have an Analogue receiver with D2MAC baseband connectors that you can connect to 110MHz plug in and "see" symbol rate of a found Transponder manually tuned in after finding via Sat IF spectrum analysis.

The Satellite QPSK looks like an FM signal with bandwidth = symbol rate.

watty

Apogee wrote: »

Not 60 mins then.

Up to 60min if you set small step size

The default 15 min is suited to finding "regular" transponders at common symbol rates.

aidan_walsh

I'm temp locking this for the time being until I can get some advise on certain aspects of this thread. If you have any questions please PM me.