News.

Updated 06 March 2010

Thinking of buying any satellite tv equipment? Check out the SatCure web site. You can get a small discount by using the voucher form on this site  :-)   Details here

Need help? Dont contact me - join a specialist forum! You can get info you need , and help others too. Check out satellites.co.uk A nice friendly forum with over 200,000  members and chock full of useful info.

6th March 2010:         Eutelsat W2 at 16E expired with a major technical fault on January 27th. All traffic has been moved over to the co-located Eurobird 16A, Eutelsat W2M (moved to 16E in early January) and Eutelsat Sesat 1 (moved from 36E when W7 went into service and on station at 36E by the end of January.

1st January 2010:    Happy New Year!

26th December 2009:    More defunct European satellites spotted by the satobs.org lads. This time its Arabsat 1A & Hotbird 1 seen to be flashing slowly as they tumble slowly in their eternal junk orbits.

More satellite moves to update as well:
Thor 6 is on air at 1W
Recently launched Intelsat 15 is testing at 63.2E
Amos 1 has been sold/leased to Intelsat has moved to 47.2E and been renamed Intelsat 24
Eutelsat W7 is testing near 50E and will be replacing Sesat 1 at 36E.
Ex Asian bird Asiasat 2 has been renamed Amos 5i. She will slot at 17E and provide C-band coverage into Africa
Eutelsat W1 has moved to 4E and been renamed Eurobird 4A
Hotbird 3 (Eurobird 10 / Eurobird 4) was moved to 76E and renamed Eutelsat W76. She has now moved to 75E and has been redesignated Eutelsat W75. She is also know as ABS 1B aftwer ABS took capacity on the ageing satellite - W75 is now running 0.8degrees inclined so has a couple of useful years left before the wobble gets too big.
Hotbird 4 (Atlantic Bird 4) is operating as additional capacity at 15.8E and is renamed Eurobird 16
Turksat 1C operating at 31E is now running 1.5 degrees inclined so doesnt have much more than a year left.
Badr 3 has moved out over the Atlantic and is drifting slowly westward out past 16W
Astra 1C at 2E is running heavily inclined - now almost 3°.
More inclined birds - Thor 2 at 5E - 1.4° / Astra 1D at 31.3E - 2° / Sirius 3 at 1W - 0.8° / Intelsat 603 at 20W - 6.7° / Intelsat 603 at 47.5E - 4.8°.

22nd September 2009:    Lots of satellite changes:
Eurobird 9 (ex Hotbird 2) has slotted at 48E and been renamed Eutelsat W48
Eurobird 4 (ex Hotbird 3 / Eurobird 10 has slotted in Asian skies at 76E & been renamed Eutelsat W76
Astra 1F has gone to 57E although is currently off air.
Bard 3 (ex Arabsat 3A) has moved from 26E to 20E.(20E is Arabsat's new C-band slot and will have a new bird launched there early next year)
Amos 1 left 4W and is moving slowly eastwards.

30th July 2009:    Astra 1F is off air and no doubt will be redeployed to another orbital slot in the near future.

23rd July 2009:    It definitely looks like Astra 1F is being run down in preparation to being removed from 19E - channels are steadily being removed

21st July 2009:    Having just been scanning the satellite-observation website, the sat-obs lads have spotted more of our defunct comms sats flashing as they tumble above our heads. This time its Hispasat 1B & Turksat 1B that have been spotted.

27th May 2009: lots of satellite related news in recent weeks:
Express AM-44 has taken over all services from Express A3 at 11W
Eutelsat W2A has taken over all services from Eutelsat W1 at 10E
Eutelsat W1 is rumoured to be redeployed to 80E in June
Hotbird 4 / Atlantic Bird 4 has slotted at 16E and been redesignated again - shes now Eurobird 16
the faulty Eutelsat W2M is dumped at 3.8E
Astra 2C has moved from 28.2E and is now at 31.5E
Intelsat 702 has replaced Intelsat 704 at 66E, and 704 is drifting westwards.
The elderly ex American bird Galaxy 26 is on station at 50.8E and is being used for military communications
Telstar 11N is on air at 37.5W

29th April 2009:    Eutelsat W4A seems to have slotted at about 40E
Recently launched Russian bird Express-AM44 is on station at 11W
Hotbird 10 is on air in her temporary guise as Atlantic Bird 4A at 7W
The now redundant Atlantic Bird 4 is drifting eastwards.

3rd April 2009:    Some interesting info about the relocation of Galaxy 26 from American space to the skies above the Middle East

3rd March 2009:    Hotbird 2 / Eurobird 9 has been renamed again - shes now Eutelsat W4A, and is moving away from 9E to a new temporary home at 36E.

21st February 2009:    More defunct communications satellites have been spotted by the  Sat-Obs lads. Seen in the last couple of weeks - Eutelsat 1-F1 & Eutelsat 2-F2. Both spotted flashing so are tumbling as they forlornly circle the Earth.
Hotbird 10 successfully launched a few days ago. She will eventually replace Hotbird 6, but first shes going to 7W to replace Atlantic Bird 4.

18th February 2009:    Astra 1G has moved to 23.5E and is on air transmitting nice high power digital signals.

17th February 2009:    Hotbird 9 went into service in the early hours of this morning. She took over all the traffic from Hottie 7A which is to move to 9E and become Eurobird 9A. EB9A is expected in service by March 1st.

8th January 2009:    The newly launched Eutelsat W2M (was to replace W2 at 16E), has suffered a major power system anomaly before it even went into service. Eutelsat have decided its not fit for service and will  not be joining the fleet... Eutelsat W3B which was supposed to be going to 7E mid 2010 will now go to 16E.

24th January 2009:    Long overdue but I've finally got time to do some badly needed updates to some of the charts.
Astra 5A at 31.5E (ex Sirius 2) has suffered total failure and the mission has been ended
Astra 1M went into service at 19E in the last few days and good signals are being reported as far east as Georgia and Dubai!
Hotbird 9 will replace Hotbird 7A in the near future, with 7A off to 9E to improve this slot.
Eutelsat W2M will replace W2 in the near future.

4th October 2008:    Not many updates in the last six months, but Ive finally got time to do some updates to the charts....
Thor 2 was withdrawn from 1W and slotted at 5E. She is back on air with high powered signals easily received in the UK.

3rd October 2008:    Turksat 1C was recently reported to be on air carrying test signals

3rd September 2008:      Turksat 1C has slotted at 31E but is currently still off air
Badr 6 is in full operation at 26E, although there is no chance of Ku band reception in the UK

3rd August 2008:    Astra 1N was ordered on 14th July.
Turksat 1C has been withdrawn from 42E and is heading westwards.
Astra 1C is now running 1.7 degrees inclined, so is pretty much useless for DTH broadcasting purposes now.
Astra 1D is reported as now running 0.8 degrees inclined so cant have too much life left.

2nd June 2008:    Sorry for the lack of updates recently - Ive been very busy at work again.....

30th April 2008:    No changes on the channel front since the last update.
Sirius 2 has slotted at 31.5E and has been renamed Astra 5A
Optus A3 has been sent to junk orbit - she was obviously only keeping the 31.5E slot reservation open
AMC-14 has been declared a total loss and SES are discussion their options to get rid of her.

15th March 2008:    Sirius 2 has been withdrawn from 5E and is currently drifting slowly eastwards
Thor 5 has slotted at 1W
The Russians lost another satellite last night when the Proton carrying AMC 14 into orbit suffered a malfunction in the upper stage. AMC 14 is now stranded in a low orbit and is likely to be crashed into the Pacific.

15th March 2008:    Thor 5 has been successfully launched and is in place at 1W. She will be taking over traffic from Thor 2 in the near future.
Sirius 2 has been withdrawn from 5E and is being sent to 23.5E

2nd February 2008:    Apologies for the lack of updates recently - Ive been very busy at work, but I'll be updating the sat charts over the next couple of days.
Sirius 4 is in full commercial traffic and has replaced both Sirius 2 and Sirius 3.

The earlier news has been moved to the 2007 archive due to the amount of space it was taking up.

Site introduction

This site has grown out of the AnalogueSat website, which I set up in February 2001. That site was set up to provide information about the free tv channels I found whilst experimenting with an old analogue Sky TV system I was given. I originally thought I might get a few dozen hits from analogue fans, but the site has now had over 100,000 visits. Ive had emails from Estonia, Latvia, Russia, Qatar, Afghanistan, and quite a few other countries too.

At the beginning of June 2001, I treated myself to a lovely Echostar 3000 digital & analogue receiver, and Ive spent many evenings seeing what I can find with it, and making notes too. This web site is the result of this experimentation.

All the channels listed here are free to air (no smart cards of any type needed), and have been seen by myself here in the Scottish Borders using either a 60cm or an 80cm dish.

Please note, my digital lists were never meant to be 100% up to date. I work full time, and the web sites are a 1 man operation. I dont have the free time to keep every table completely up to date. Treat them more as a good idea of whats available with simple kit. There is a "last updated" timestamp on each page to show exactly how up to date each table is. Use Flysat if you are after the absolutely latest channel info.

I have had some suggestions to link my site to somewhere which is more up to date, but I enjoy tinkering with my site, so I'll keep on with what I'm doing for the moment.

I also have problems getting some of the signals. I can only see 50šE - 5šE without any problems then trees get in the way. Seeing the satellites further west means moving my dish. I tend to only move the dish when the weather is good..

The complete list of equipment I use for digital tv reception. The latest Site Revisions can be found here.

If you arrived here from a search engine and dont see the frameset, click here to get to the front page.

The web site will not work properly if you dont.