Quote:
Originally Posted by bobkat
I think that is horse feathers Bill. The Birdog looks for and locks onto the identifier beacon transmitted from one of the satellite's transponders. This unique ID beacon doesn't change with transponder content. At least that is my understanding. I know that one of my Birdogs has been successfully finding Nimiq 82 and 91 since 2002 without having to reconfigure the file. The other one (version US 2.0) needed a refreshed config file but then it worked OK.
kat |
Are you sure about the meter using the beacon signals? The last time I tuned in to one of those beacon signals, I'm pretty sure that it was just a plain carrier, with no modulation or anything. They are so narrow, I think down in the 5 to 15 KHz width if I remember right, that any modulation would be easy to hear, since only low rate modulation would fit in that narrow a signal, and I couldn't hear anything in the signal.
If there IS some identifying info in the signal, I'd be real interested in the details.
It was always my impression that those beacons only identified the sat by their frequency, such as for example, AMC3 has beacons at 3700.5V and 4199.5H on
C-band, and at 12198H on Ku. which would be useless for a consumer LNBF, since the frequencies are all within about a 2 or 3 MHz range, and consumer LNBFs drift that much.
Anyway, if you have any info re there being actual data in these beacons, and how it is encoded, I'd be real interested. The only info I've ever seen just gave the frequencies.