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Comment by tlrobinson

8 years ago

There was supposed to be a geosynchronous satellite over North America too (https://amsat-uk.org/satellites/geosynchronous/na-gso-sat/) but I haven’t heard anything about it recently.

Geosynchronous is interesting because you just need to point a fixed dish at it and it always works, whereas the LEO satellites only occasionally pass overhead and you need the antenna to track it (either by hand or with a tracker)

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tlrobinson

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tzs  8 years ago

Speaking of geosynchronous satellites, every site or app that I've seen for helping aim a dish works by telling you for your location the altitude and azimuth of the satellite.

This is kind of annoying when trying to figure out something like where on your property you have all of line of sight to the satellite, a place you can mount the dish, and a good way to run the cable from the disk to wherever you receiver will be.

It's especially annoying when you have a lot of potential obstacles blocking line of sight, and so you need to have a pretty good idea of the satellite location to tell if you do have sight. If magnetic north is a little off in your area then using a compass to find azimuth could be uncertain enough to give you the wrong answer.

Unless I'm missing something there is a much better way we could do this. You could tell the app or website your location, and a time in the evening that you can check for line of site. The app/site could then give you a star chart for that time at your location, marking on the star chart where the satellite is.

You could then note that stars near the satellite on the chart, and note how to find the satellite starting from them (e.g,., "go 2/3 from this star to that star, turn counterclockwise 90 degrees, and go half way to this star...and you are staring right at the satellite").

Then you could go outside, find those same stars, and locate the satellite using them. No stupid fumbling around trying to measure altitude and azimuth. It's just go out, and find a place where you can see your reference stars, and with a glance you can tell if you have line of site on the satellite.

Even better, you should be able to give the app/site a range of times you are available, and let it suggest particularly good times to try to find the satellite. It can look for available times where the satellite is very close to a prominent, easy to find star (or planet...no need to limit this to stars), or when it is in a particularly easy to find spot in a prominent constellation.