Archive news 2006.
This is the news that was on the front page of the site in 2006. I've moved it here as it was taking up rather a lot of space.
28th December 2006: I spent a cold hour outside this afternoon looking for Telstar 12 at 15W and Astra 1C at 2E. No luck with 15W yet, but Astra 1C is incredibly strong - Im getting 85%+ quality on one of my scruffy old 80cm dishes. Astra 1C chart now added to the site :-)
25th December 2006: The website counter on the
front page passed 99,000 this evening!
I'll be updating all the tables over the next few days - I know some of them are way out
of date - I blame work related exhaustion!
15th November 2006: Pictures of last weeks launch of Badr-4 added
10th October 2006: Eutelsat W3A at 7E suffered a temporary outage on the 9th October when the satellite lost attitude and went into a "safe mode" She was off air for about 10 hours.
5th October 2006: Poor old Hotbird 3 suffered serious damage on the night of 3/4 October.. :-( She suffered an "anomaly at the end of an eclipse period", which seems to have wrecked one of the solar panel arrays. This has led to a considerable reduction in available power. This wont affect the redeployment to 10E and the rename to Eurobird 10, although not all transponders will be available for use at its new home.
4th October 2006: Hotbird 1 is on the move. Shes being redeployed and is drifting slowly eastwards.
3rd October 2006: Hotbird 8 took over all Hotbird 3 frequencies overnight. Shes putting out VERY strong signals!
2nd October 2006: Hotbird 3 is due to end her life at 13E when shes replaced by Hottie 8 tomorrow (3rd October). HB3 is moving to 10E in the next couple of weeks and has been redesignated "Eurobird 10"
23rd September 2006: Hotbird 8 is moving eastwards towards 13E. Testing has finished and she should be in service in a couple of weeks. Round at 33E, Intelsat 802 has suffered some sort of failure and is believed to be off air..
18th September 2006: Ive
treated myself to a Dreambox 7020S.Its a nice receiver, but its hellish complicated to
learn how to fly it compared to the Echostar.
It looks like Hotbird 3 will be moving to 10E when its retired from 13E.. A report on the
Transponder News forum says 10E will become the new "Italian Eurobird" slot,
with many of the regional servics moving off 13E
Hotbird 8 has been testing at very high power at 3E. Ive been getting 90% + signals on my
5E dish with no realignment, and Ive seen reports shes visible from 1W right round to 5E!!
2nd September 2006: Eutelsat have ordered the new W2A satellite. Launch is planned for Q1 2009, and has a minimum lifespan of 15 years.
30th August 2006: Hotbird 1
is reported to be 0.5° inclined at 13E. No wonder Eutelsat wanted her out of front
line service! She should be moved to a different orbital slot soon.
Hottie 8 is testing at 1.8E, and is reported transmitting high power test frequencies.
12th August 2006: Hotbird 8
was successfully launched and is heading for 13E. Eutelsat expect to have her in
commercial service in October after a couple of weeks in orbit testing.
2nd August 2006: Im behind on my updates again.... Firstly I was
involved in our big IT project at work - replacing our dilapidated computer system with
new kit, then we were away on holiday down in Gloucestershire for a fortnight. I'll be
updating all the tables over the next few days again.
Hotbird 8 launch coverage - Hottie 8 will be launched in the evening of 4th / 5th August .
The launch is going to be shown on 13E (12112V 27500 3/4 "HB8 Launch")
20th June 2006: Astra 1KR at 19E was fired up this morning. The digital services on 10921H / 11597V / 11670H & 11686V were the first to be swapped over all off 1E.
17th June 2006: SES have declared Astra 1KR fully operational at 19E. She will be in service in a few days time. Sadly they also confirmed that Astra 1B is finished and will be sent to junk orbit in the near future.
12th June 2006: Radio Caroline finally launched onto the Sky epg this morning. Have a listen to them on epg number 0199 (!!!)
27th May 2006: Hotbird 4 has
left 13E. Its on its way to 7W to become part of the Nilesat operation. Meanwhile, Telecom
2C has left 5W and is slowly moving eastwards. The more or less derelict Optus A3 (ex
Australian) is currently near 59E and seems to be in graveyard orbit - its almost 20 years
old, so cannot have any useful life left in it!
An Ariane 5 launched Thaicom 5 (78.5E) and Satmex 6 (109W) this evening. A solitary feed
was spotted on 5W, and EuroNews took the actual liftoff. I watched the full coverage on
the Arianespace website :-)
18th May 2006: Its Eurovision semi final night, where 23 countries are trying to grab one of the 10 places in the final. Noted carrying the semi are the following stations BBC3 UK, TVR1 & TVRi Romania, RTPi Portugal, TRT International, TV Polonia Poland, MKTV Macedonia, RTS Sat Serbia, ERT Sat Greece, Slovenia 2, TV Bulgaria, Armenia 1, SF2 TSR2 & TSI2 Switzerland, France 4, & SVT Europa.
9th May 2006: Astra 1KR is on air and broadcasting blank carriers at very high power at 3.4E. (I can get them at 90% strength on my Sirius 5E dish without realigning it!) Current frequencies to try can be found here.
7th May 2006: Astra 1KR is
geostationary at its test slot (5.3E) With any luck, test signals should be on air in the
next few days.
Eutelsat announced they have ordered Hotbird 9 a couple of days ago. :-) She is due for
launch late 2008.
20th April 2006: Astra 1KR safely launched this evening.Its due in service at 19E in June sometime. Here is the predicted footprint for the new satellite.
Hotbird 7A was put into service in the early hours of this morning. Its taken over most of the Hotbird 1 frequencies. There have been a few slight frequency changes as well, so I'll quickly update the Hotbird table with the changes.
Astra 1KR should launch tonight. Coverage on Astra Vision 3 as noted below.
18th April 2006: Thursday night's Astra 1KR launch will be carried on 19E 12670V 22000 5/6 on "Astra Vision 3" The channel is already operational and carrying an Astra test card.
17th April 2006: Ive been
away to Puerta Pollensa for a nice relaxing 2 week break, so the charts are sadly out of
date again. I'll make a start on updating them this afternoon.
Hotbird 7A seems to have successfully passed its tests at 9.8E, and has been moved to 13E.
It is due to start taking over from Hotbird 1 from 0100 UTC on 20th April.
Optus B1 seems to have been recovered after its problems, and is back in service.
30th March 2006: More satellite problems. Express AM11 way round at 96.5E seems to have been hit by space debris, and will be dropped into the Pacific next week. Meanwhile many Australian & New Zealand tv services are off air after Optus B1 at 160E suffered problems.
25th March 2006: The ill fated Arabsat 4A which was left in a useless low orbit after a botched launch on February 28th was deorbited on the 23rd March. It splashed down into the Pacific
5th March 2005: Atlantic
Bird 1 at 12.5W joins the site - a new analogue test card on the satellite made it nice
and easy to find.....!
Ive added the Atlantic Bird 1 footprints to the
"Focus On..." page on the site.
4th March 2006: The delayed
Hotbird 7A launch is now 9th March. Lift of is scheduled for 2206-2316 UK time.
Two new pages added to the "Focus On..." section - the Atlantic Bird 1 launch, and the Hellasat 2 footprints.
1st March 2006: Arabsat 4A (aka Badr-1) was launched from Baikonur last night.Lift off was perfect, but a problem with the Breeze-M 4th stage led to early separation of the craft and it is now stranded in low orbit. We can expect it to be crashed into the Pacific in the next couple of weeks.
24th February 2006: Hottie 7A launch was rescheduled for tonight, but has been scrubbed again - this time due to telemetry problems with Hotbird 7A.
21st February 2006: The Hotbird 7A launch has been scrubbed due to an anomaly with the ground equipment. I'll post the new details once they become available.
18th February 2006: Hotbird
7A will be launched on Feb 21st. Coverage will be in digital on 11303H on a channel called
"Business TV". Launch window is 22.13 to 23.23 GMT.
14 test channels have appeared on 11642V 127500 2/3 on 28E. TV1 is carrying tests for
Channel M Manchester, the others, TV2 - TV14 are just carrying BT testcards.
28th January 2006: Apologies for the lack of updates in the last couple of weeks - Ive been spending my much of my spare time configuring a new computer.
15th January 2006: The Czechlink package has left 28E. ARY One World and ARY QTV are testing in the clear on Eurobird 1.
6th January 2006: More testcards and info cards added to the site
5th January 2006: If you are
new to satellite and want some help, why not join a forum.
Theres plenty out there to join, and cater for all ability levels.
The TV1000 stream on 5E mentioned in the previous note is no longer fta.
CzechLink on 28E are to cease operations off Eurobird1 at the end of January and move to
23E
Astra 1KR will be launched in April on an Atlas probably from Cape Canaveral. 1L should
launch at the end of the year.
Hotbird 7A will launch 21st February from Kourou on an Ariane 5 It will ride into orbit
with military communications satellite Spainsat.
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