My Satellite Earth Link

hier gibt es den deutschen TextDeutsch
satellite earth link

switches under the roof The Earth link consists of four satellite dishes. To the left there is a 125 cm Gibertini for Astra 2 (28.2° east), alongside a 85 cm Gibertini for Astra 1 (19.2° east) and Hotbird (13° east).
The third one is a 100 cm Gibertini with a STAB rotor and a 70...80mA current Inverto Green Quad LNB. Together with the rotor the total current does not exceed 350mA.
In focus of the 125 cm dish an Inverto Black Ultra Quad LNB is mounted, for maximum reception of the BBC programs. The solid mechanic of the 125 cm Gibertini enables perfect measuring, especially fine elevation adjustment. I calibrated it with 11.126,5 GHz (22.000 5/6 V QPSK), this is here one of the weakest Astra 2G transponders. Don't forget turning the LNB to the exact tilt! Poor receivable BBC Four HD is also on Astra 2G, only from may until august sporadic outages may occur in the early evening.

turnable dish Topfield TF3000CIPproThe forth is a polarmount 150 cm Kreiselmeyer Prime Focus dish from 1989 with a 24 inch Hirschmann push rod motor that is responsible for a very quiet operation.
I use an Invacom TWF-031 twin flange LNB on the feedhorn. Optimized tilt for Astra 2G, just like the 125 cm Gibertini. Random tests on other positions don't show any reception loss. With both turnable dishes I see all satellites from approx. 70° east to 53° west, at least during winter, otherwise two trees may attenuate the reception. To have easy access to all satellites with mutliple receivers, every receiver is connected upstream to a 4-to-1 switch. From the Astra 19.2° east quattro LNB all four lines are ready to distribute with a simple multiswitch.
Turning the 150 cm dish is managed by the elderly Topfield TF3000CIPpro, one of the rare receivers with a real 36V connector and a positioner. Sadly, it doesn't show DVB-S2, so it's used just for positioning only.
The STAB rotor with the 100 cm dish is moved by the VU+Duo2 receiver, one LNB wire is connected direct to one of the 4 tuners. Exact positioning was never easier!
Why all this effort? In no way for watching the boring appropriate programs, this would be a waste of time. It is more interesting to watch foreign programs or to be live on current feeds! Best example: the NASA Feeds with the formerly Space Shuttle launches and landings or the reports from the ISS. On Sat-Benelux, Transponder News, DXtv or Satclub Thüringen you see what's going on.
TecTime TVIn earlier days you needed a turnable dish to watch the irregular broadcasts from Christian Mass aka. Dr. Dish on various satellite positions. Later he ran successfully TecTime TV on Astra 19.2° east. Brilliant broadcasts, unfortunately discontinued. Now Dr. Dish is the publisher of the very interesting TecTime magazine.
Here is my old settings list for the TF3000CIPpro, data will be mostly outdated and won't be serviced any more, but maybe useful for a first run. Although the different satellites are saved in the file, their positions are not in there. Users of this list (with the help of Topfield's Vega software) have to save the satellite positions manually...
Download settings from 2006/01/26 as ZIP file (56 kByte).

Landscape-LabelMy favorite digital program was the Landscape Channel, transmitting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the most beautiful landscape videos, set to classical and New Age music. Its home was until the end of the year 2000 on satellite Telstar 11 (former Orion 1, 37.5° west), then the signal was fed via internet to the cable providers, so there was only the scrambled signal on Kopernikus 23.2° east. And then the program disappeared completely :-(
In november 2003 Landscape was back, now on 28.2° east within the program of "Friendly TV", but after a year it disappeared again.
The Landscape Channel appeared for short spell as video stream, but not it seems to be terminated.
Classic fM TVAs a replacement I watched until the end of 2007 Classic fM TV on Astra 2 (28.2° Ost), here you saw a lot of classical clips but also smooth pop music.
The best things in life vanish much too early.
O-Music TVAs a replacement therefor (?) O-Music transmits now with the same parameters as Classic fM TV. Similar music choice, but the picture quality is worse.

C-Music TVI liked even more C-Music on Eurobird 9 (9° East), 11.958 GHz, vertikal, SR 27.500, FEC 3/4: classical, cinema, chillout - as C-Music describes.
Melody Zen TV was on the same satellite, with great landscape clips either in original sound or with New Age music, even in HDTV!
Sadly, since 2009 this program was encrypted and disappeared some times later.

Besides the TF3000CIPpro I used a TF7700HDPVR when HDTV started, later even with E2. A VU+ Duo2 arrived here in 2013. Five years later the VU+ Solo 4K joined the team to check out UHD transmissions.
My Topfield TF5500PVR is disrated to a radio receiver, but it manages this disciplin grateful thanks to Happy's TAP NiceDisplay showing every information on the neglected dot matrix VFD.

Nokia 9500And never forget the good old d-box! You will find some useful information here.

In conclusion a little reminiscence of my WISI OR-210, controling brave my turnable dish for 16 years. I had to replace it, because analogue television has disappeared and inspite of many extensions the operational concept wasn't up to date any more.

Dish alignment with Dishpointer:
Select your satellite and input your location or coordinates. The map scrolls by pressing the left mouse key or the navigation arrows in the upper left corner, -/+ activates zoom. You can also click and drag the marker.
Beneath the map appears the exact data to align your dish!

DishPointer Android app

Back to Main Page

updated: 2020-11-08