CAN WE CHANGE THE DATE OF THE INSTALLATION?
Currently, we anticipate that downlink installations will begin in November. The installation company, Com-Kraft, will contact you to let you know when they are scheduled to be at your site. If you have a problem with the date they have selected, you should discuss it with them at that time.

WHAT ARE THE DIMENSIONS OF THE DISH?
The dish is a 3.7 meter dish (12 feet).

HOW MUCH DOES THE ROOF MOUNT SYSTEM AND DISH WEIGH?
The dish and mounting system weighs 1151 pounds. The roof loading is 3.6 lbs/sq. ft. at 0 mph wind speed and goes up to 59.76 Ibs/sq. ft. at 125 mph wind speed. If your require further specifications for you building engineers, please call our office. (805-636-4755)

HOW CAN WE CONTACT THE SURVEY CREW TO CHANGE THE LOCATION OF THE INSTALLATION?
The installation company is Com-Kraft and you may contact Woody Bilyeu at (318) 628- 7924. If you change the location of your dish for whatever reason, a new site survey will be required and you may incur additional costs for this new survey.

WHO IS GOING TO PAY FOR ANY ADDITIONAL COSTS?
All costs over and above the standard ground mount installation will be borne by your COE. These charges will be communicated to you by Barry Sullivan of Comsat RSI Corporation.

WHEN IS THE INSTALLATION GOING TO TAKE PLACE?
Installations are now anticipated to begin in November. This start date is contingent upon Comsat receiving a purchase order with COEs for all non-standard installation charges. Please process your purchase order as quickly as possible.

DO I HAVE TO BUILD A PLATFORM IF I HAVE A ROOF MOUNT?
You do not need to build a platform unless the survey team has indicated that you need to do so. If your roof is relatively flat and can support the weight, then you will most likely not need to build a platform. If you have any questions about this, please contact Woody Bilyeu at (318) 628-7924.

WHO DO WE CONTACT IF WE HAVE A PROBLEM AFTER INSTALLATION?
If you have a problem with your system, or any component, please contact this office first (805-636-4809) and we will attempt to troubleshoot the problem first and then determine the appropriate course of action.

WHAT EQUIPMENT IS NEEDED TO RECEIVE SATELLITE TV?
A TVRO (TeleVision Receive Only) System consists of the following components:

THE DISH
This is the most visible component, a parabolic reflector is made of Solid Aluminum. Dish sizes vary from small (3-4 feet KU BAND) all the way to 16-20 Ft (Commercial C- BAND) with the average falling between 7-12 ft; 10 ft being most common. This device focuses the microwave signals coming from the satellites much as the mirror in a reflecting telescope concentrates the light from distant galaxies.

THE MOUNT
The most common type of dish mount is called a POLAR MOUNT, so named because it is oriented to coincide with the earth's axis, enabling it to "track" the satellites, which are spread out in geostationary orbit in a band of the sky called the "Clarke Belt", named after Arthur C. Clarke, who discovered the concept of geostationary communications satellites back in 1945.

The mount is installed on a 5.5 inch pipe, which is sunk in concrete.

RECEIVER
The receiver takes the signal from the LNB and produces a TV picture from the wideband FM video, and also allows you to tune SUBCARRIER audio. Newer receivers work with the standard 950-1450 mhz block that comes out of a standard LNB. Older ones use a direct 70 MHZ feed and have an LNA (low noise amplifier) and downconvertor at the dish.

Your Chaparral receiver does not have a descrambler built in for decoding program services. Your decoder, called an IRD, is outboarded from the Chaparral 100c plus receiver. IRD stands for Integrated Receiver Descrambler.

HOW SMALL OF A DISH CAN I USE, AND WHAT IS DBS?
Under optimal conditions for C band, a 7 foot dish will give very useful performance these days. KU band can usually get by with a smaller dish especially with the more powerful KU satellites.

BUT smaller digital dishes are available now. These digital satellite services are transmitted from a 120 watt transponders from a fixed location. This service is called DBS and is sold under the names DirectTV, Primestar and Echostar. The system employs an 18 inch dish, and a special addressable receiver. This receiver will NOT receive other satellites; ONLY the one fixed system for which it is designed. It is fully addressable, and basically, is nothing more than a cable company in the sky.

A consideration: at present there are three different DBS systems. They use two totally incompatible methods of signal delivery. Since the DBS dishes do not move, even if they were compatible systems, you are pretty well locked into ONE supplier of audio and video.

If you live on the outer portions of the USA (Florida, California, Washington State, Maine, etc) you will need a bigger dish to get the same quality as someone in the central USA in most cases.

Programming that is sent on the Ku band, is subject to rain storms that can cause outages or poor pictures. This is one reason that a larger dish is specified.

CAN YOU WATCH MORE THAN ONE TV AT THE SAME TIME?
You can watch a single channel on multiple TVs, if you have cabled from your satellite receiver to each TV or put the satellite receiver output into your in-house distribution system.

WHAT ABOUT THIS KU BAND?
Ku band satellites don't require as large a dish to receive, some have 32 transponders instead of the 24 on C band. SBS6, for example is one busy bird, with MANY sports and newsfeeds. KU offers a LOT to those who want to experiment and explore. G4 and G7 have beautiful KU signals, and if you live in the Northern USA, there is some very interesting stuff on the ANIK satellites on KU band.

Ku band satellites are harder to tune than C band, often requiring extensive manual adjustments. Ku is also more weather sensitive. Ku programming services are not as well documented as C band. On a larger dish (like a 10 footer) the KU signals are as narrow as a laser beam. One brief touch of the actuator and the signal is gone. PBS is on KU, and ABC also has feeds there. NBC feeds all its programming on K2, a KU satellite. ALL NEWS CHANNEL is also seen on SBS6 quite often when the two CONUS channels are not being used for newsfeeds.

KU is also the place to look for NEWS and SPORTS feeds, and backhauls of all sorts. International type programming (Chinese, Russian, Japanese language) and many educational feeds are all up there.

HOW LONG DOES A SATELLITE "LAST" AND WHY DO THEY GET REGULARLY REPLACED?
The average lifespan for a communications satellite is about 10 years. While the electronics inside the satellite can last many many years, the determining factor is the "station keeping fuel". Satellites only "appear to be stationary because of their location in the Clarke Belt, in reality they are whirring about the planet, and their orbits become eccentric if left alone. So each satellite has small rockets on board to regularly adjust the orbit of the bird. After 10 years this fuel runs out, and the satellite can no longer be adjusted with respect to its position. This causes the satellite to start to appear to "wobble" up and down in the orbital plane, and eventually become unusable. Before this happens, a replacement bird is launched, and the old satellite is unceremoniously "kicked" up into a higher "parking" orbit. While it is a nice thought that some day a space salvage company could go up there and refuel all those old birds, it is unlikely, and the rapid changes in technology make the older low power satellites nothing more than curious antiques.

WHAT IS AN INCLINED ORBIT SATELLITE AND HOW CAN I RECEIVE THEM?
Inclined orbit birds are satellites that "wobble" north and south and vary in the vertical plane, as explained in the previous paragraph. At the end of a satellite's life, when station keeping fuel is running low if a replacement satellite is not ready, there is the option to "go inclined". One method used is called the "Comsat Maneuver", which puts the bird into an elongated figure 8 pattern. On C band this method can get 6 months or more of life out of a near dead satellite (Usually the electronics are fine, it is just the low amount of Hydrazine fuel that marks the EOL or End Of Life of a satellite. On C band a slightly inclined satellite will appear to have a weaker signal during parts of the day when it is off axis. Many of us remember that this was done with the old Telstar 301, causing some of the Wild and Network feeds to be less than perfect. However, it is better than no satellite at all, which is the case when a launched bird dies.

Several Intelsats are this way, as are a couple of SBS birds, such as SBS3. ON KU band, because of narrower beamwidth, an inclined bird can only be viewed during an hour or so a day on a standard satellite system, when its wobble places it directly over the equator. The Robert Smathers SSSSC Chart lists the times of day you can pick up these inclined birds. Some, like SBS3 have a continuous ID slate so you can find them. Professional Downlinkers often have DUAL AXIS tracking systems which allow for adjustment in the vertical as well as horizontal plane.

IT IS EARLY SPRING (FALL) AND I WAS WATCHING MY SATELLITE DISH AND THE PICTURE GOT WEAKER AND THEN VANISHED FOR 20 MINUTES. IS MY SYSTEM BROKEN?
No. You have just experienced the twice yearly Solar Transit Event. This occurs when the sun, which emanates a very strong amount of microwave energy is in line with the Clarke Belt where the satellites and your dish live. This is incorrectly called "SUNSPOTS" even by people who should know better (TV station engineers and the like). It only lasts a week or so, and affects EVERY satellite in the arc moving from east to west. It affects EVERYONE who uses satellites, including the Cable Companies, TV and radio stations. Cable channels will wink out, Radio programs will be replaced by music, and TV stations have to carefully record shows in the middle of the night to play back during the day so viewers won't know there is a problem.

I LIVE ON A WOODED LOT WITH LOTS OF TREES. IS THIS A PROBLEM?
Not if you have a chain saw. Trees in the way mean you don't get a picture, at least in the summer time. Trees have a tendency to block the microwave signals. Usually you can find SOME place to put the dish to see the satellites.