MagazinesNewspapersBuy Gift CardRedeem Gift Card
GB flagUnited Kingdom

Europe

Austria Belgium Bulgaria Croatia Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Guernsey Hungary Ireland Isle of Man Italy Jersey Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Malta Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Romania Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Ukraine United Kingdom

Asia

China Cyprus Hong Kong Indonesia Japan Philippines Saudi Arabia Singapore Thailand

Oceania

Australia New Zealand

Americas

Canada United States

Africa

South Africa
Magazines Radio User Magazine 25 August 2022Satellite radio: now and then(pt ii)

Satellite radio: now and then(pt ii)

10 min read

Kevin Ryan offers the second and final part of his mini-series on satellite radio, he introduces his satellite receiving equipment, addresses some intriguing irregularities and has Part Two of his Glossary.

Kevin Ryan kevin@radio-digital.co.uk

Fig. 1: The basic setup for the dish and LNB. DISEeQ only applies if there is a positioner on the dish. Fig. 2: The 40cm dish and the LNB on the offset LNB arm. The kit is sat on its hard shell travelling case. Fig. 3: A basic satellite finder meter, powered by the receiver. You can see the skew markings on the LNB and the SC-25S receiver. Fig. 4: The info screen for VOA radio shows the signal intensity and quality from transponder 12226, plus the 27500 baud symbol rate. Fig. 5: A few of the 80 radio channels found on the Hotbird 13E satellite cluster are dominated by USAGM stations. Fig. 6: Radio Tunis Chaîne Internationale (RTCI) has a single programme in English, at 1305 each day.

Last month (RadioUser, August 2022: 38-40), I introduced the idea of tuning into digital radio services delivered by satellite to Europe. This is a part of our hobby that was quite popular a decade or so ago.

Encouraged by my easy success with Hotbird 13E, I was now hopeful of picking up at least one satellite.

Receiving Gear

First of all, a quick summary of my satellite reception kit. I bought it about 10 years ago before Maplin closed down its shops. At that time, the more efficient DVB-S2 standard was in use on many transponders, which, I believe, the Comac SC-25S receiver ignores. I am not completely sure about this because of the strange signal strength readings from DVB-S2 transponders.

Setting up the equipment (Fig.1), was relatively easy, once I figured out the various mounting options for the dish. The 40cm oval dish (measured from bottom to top) has mounting brackets for a vehicle, tabletop, wall and pole. I went for tabletop as the most convenient option (Fig. 2). The operating manual for the Comac SC-25S covered all details of the installation, including how to fit F-Type connectors.

The Low Noise Block downconverter (LNB) has a noise figure of 0.3dB (see Glossary). This was good in its day but modern LNBs tend to have noise figures of 0.1dB. After reviewing the results of my tests, I concluded that this small difference probably had very little effect overall.

The digital satellite receiver is very compact and is powered by a mains adaptor or the cigarette-lighter type plug to use a 12V supply from a road vehicle. The receiver plugs directly into a SCART socket on the back of a TV. After I attached the LNB feed

This article is from...