Cyberex CN-7500 Folding C-Band Satellite Dish & Free NASA TV

[@Armafly]

I am not an expert or even a radio hobbyist but I found your videos interesting and genuine.

[@saveitforparts]

I'm not an expert either, I'm just curious about what I can do with all the weird junk I hoard!

[@TaskForce141cod]

@@saveitforparts Fascinated too! I'm curious where can I learn about these materials being from a physics background?

[@hornantuutti5157]

Hooked on these aswell. Cheers from funland.

[@jacksilver4351]

Same reason I am here! Great stuff!

[@galaxy-eb9sp]

you can tell this guy loves what he is doing, he has a constant smile on his face, you dont see that much now-a-days

[@paulmoffat9306]

I designed and built one at the company I worked for, some 50 years ago - for the 'free' TV broadcasts. The dish I made, was 16' in diameter, parabolic, metal mesh. At that time, they were FM analog signals, and not encrypted. Good times. The best available LNB had a 110'K noise figure, which is a FAR cry from today's Ku band LNBs.

[@mathewgeorge9550]

Is it possible to share such a design? Hard to get large dishes these days.

[@patchvonbraun]

Actually, 110K is only about 30-40K worse than what is achieved at C-band and Ku-band these days. The advertised noise figures are complete nonsense, and each vendor tries to "one up" the other on noise figure, because consumers have no idea how to measure it. But if you, like me, have the necessary knowledge, experienced, and equipment, it's not hard to see that these '10K noise temperature" LNAs aren't doing anywhere near that well. I'm a radio astronomer. I actually care about these things...

[@leonidshafir7008]

You right, Gardiner was something great. 0,8 is true 0,8 NF

[@MrPenguinLife]

Oh how the world does change, I had a C band dish back in the wild west days of the 1980's, and now I am watching you play with one on a youtube video that I am watching over a Starlink internet connection.

[@JessAnalysisTV]

Awesome sat dish.

[@PandemoniumMeltDown]

I'd take that out to fish!

[@commodoresixfour7478]

I picked one of these up years ago for free and have still have yet to use it. Thanks for showing me that they still work.

[@johntalik5937]

This brings back memories l installed sat dishes for 11 years in the high desert of California. I would love to have mine back. I had a 10 ft Orbitron. With a General Instermints 2650 it was top of the line with a 25 degree LNB you had the Cadillac of sat systems

[@blackredonyx]

I sincerly love your smile! Your passion shows through and makes your videos really awesome!

[@mattparker9726]

10:26 OMG I love that screen saver! When I was a kid I used to pretend I was flying through space on our family computer when the screen saver was on!

[@insanitycubed8832]

I remember bumping the mouse and accidentally turning off my favorite screen saver. Good times

[@corkcamden9878]

I know next to nothing about electronics/radio, but your videos have forced me to study the myriad of terms you so glibly(?) toss out and since I want to understand in a very rudimentary way what you are discussing, I continue the slog. The main reason you are so engaging is your obvious love of your subject. I am not an electrical engineer as I suspect you are, but I live in the mechanical side of things. When you make something out of nothing, I am right there with you! I wish you the best in your endeavors and wish you good health and a joyful journey. By the way, in my opinion, you are about the most well-adjusted young man I have ever encountered...from the bits I can pick up on. Cheers, sir, from the hills of Virginia! Cork

[@saveitforparts]

Sorry about all the acronyms and whatnot. I definitely didn't know most of this stuff until recently, and I had to try a lot of things to understand what they meant and how they worked.

[@wallydisc]

Put it on the snow bank. You are doing a great job man. Thanks for all of this.

[@alec4672]

I remember my dad's buddy using one of these at the hunting shack when I was like 8 or 9. Everyone was very excited and not much hunting got done that season 😂😂

[@saveitforparts]

Ha, that's great!

[@manusbrewer]

OMG! LOL! Your "stuff" pile looks like mine! Awesome! Someone else who patrols the digital scrapyard! Love your efforts to show the usefulness of the old "cutting edge" tech!

[@hypercube33]

This may be my new favorite channel. I wanted to grab the old mini dish off our deck before our landlord threw it to try to grab train transponder signals and use SDR to decode them and track when BNSF trains go by us. Also hello from La Crosse :)

[@ilgazkaraaslan4330]

Im about to choose my career and the way youre relaxed and doing projects just made me feel about following interests man, thanks.

[@saveitforparts]

Sometimes you don't know where a career will go, I didn't end up working in the same field I went to school for. I also enjoy personal projects more than school or work projects since there's generally no deadline and I can choose how I do it. I've also heard that turning a hobby into a job can make it less fun, but it probably varies by person!

[@ilgazkaraaslan4330]

@@saveitforparts word.

[@401ksolar]

That looks like a drake Earth station receiver that you have there, if I recall correctly those have a 70 megahertz IF frequency, and used an LNA or low noise amplifier connected to a block down converter that sends a 70 megahertz signal to the receiver.

[@saveitforparts]

I had to look up which of my obsolete gadgets you meant, but yes I think there's one of those in the Ax-Man surplus pile. I haven't looked at that stuff too closely yet, it's just cluttering up my workbench right now.

[@401ksolar]

@@saveitforparts with a power injector and an SDR tuned to that 70 MHz frequency would also give you an option however some of those receivers sent a variable tuning voltage to the block down converter and also had a stepper motor polar rotor for fine-tuning your skew, as you can imagine the variable voltage tuning units were highly susceptible to drift during that era, however with more accurate variable voltage supplies nowadays you could probably make it quite stable

[@gannas42]

That is a pretty wicked looking dish. Like the kind James Bond would take camping or something.

[@faustteufel9727]

I remember the days of Pringles cans, lol.

[@ocsrc]

You need to get a lot of cinder blocks and put them on each of the four base arms and put cinder blocks on top of the cinder blocks to hold the dish down The wind load against the dish is over a thousand pounds and it will flip right over

[@saveitforparts]

Yep, it's definitely not made for windy environments, and not supposed to be left deployed for long periods. It came with some big tent stakes to pound into the ground, but I think the dish itself would get damaged by gusts even if it didn't blow away.

[@johanncover1988]

Galaxy 13. This brings back so much memories of my childhood and the satellite dish we had.

[@McRocket]

That was really cool. I audibly cheered when the NASA video came up. ☮

[@mikedmann7487]

Really enjoying all your content! Keepem coming!

[@diemaschine2287]

The KZbin rabbit hole brought me to this channel. Guys like this are who you need to know when SHTF. I’m a McGyver type of guy who is self taught and can fix about anything. But this is something I have never dabbled in but can’t argue with this guys methods and results. Cool video man.

[@mattparker9726]

8:23 so it's either a failing lithium battery, or perhaps an undersized one. Either way, it's upgrade time! (spin off video idea maybe?)

[@scottwood1143]

Nice job getting it all working!

[@andrewhamop6665]

Man, I've been looking forever for a reasonably priced traditional c-band dish and here I find out that portable folding units were produced. That is quite a rare find indeed, as doing a web search for that sku reveals practically no information. Man what I wouldn't give for one of those dishes. 73 de W8IJC

[@saveitforparts]

I had no idea they existed until someone contacted me and offered to trade. It's one of those things that was probably silly and impractical for its intended use even when new, because who wants to pack that along on a vacation? However, it should be great for experimenting!

[@gorak9000]

Go search in the right part of town that has houses from the right era. Go knock on the door of any house that still has a c-band dish. Usually they can be had for free if you offer to "make it go away". The portable dish has a lot of novelty, but a 10' mesh, or better yet 12' fiberglass dish (even moreso if you can find a commercial 12' or bigger fiberglass dish) will blow this thing out of the water performance-wise!

[@saveitforparts]

Yep, I got the aluminum mesh one from a house that wanted it to go away. The LNB was full of wasps, so that was... fun...

[@saveitforparts]

Someone sent me a link to the modern version of these folding dishes for sale: www.sub-lunar.com

[@Boraxo]

Wouldn't of thought anybody would be still into these big dishes. Neighbor has a big one that hasn't been used in long long time.

[@LoftechUK]

Can’t wait to see you with that in the summer. That’s gonna be awesome

[@davek88]

Thats the coolest portable satellite i've ever seen! You Americans have all the fun toy's!

[@PandemoniumMeltDown]

This is a thing I'd actually take with me, river fishing, use it as a parasol, creating a little shade for me and the fishes, keeping the cold ones cooler longer... yep, a product I'd recommend! I'll send you pictures!

[@B_T_B]

Brilliant, your channel just popped up, glad I checked it out. Really interesting. That reminded me of being a kid trying to capture MTV over Sat in the late 80's !

[@saveitforparts]

When I lived in Alaska we had one of the big C-band dishes. We normally got Alaska PBS, but we could get MTV2 if we went and pushed it to the side a little bit. In the 90s that one had all the music videos that MTV used to have. Now I think both channels are just reality shows.

[@B_T_B]

@@saveitforparts Agree, dont watch them now. Hey, being from the UK MTV back then was some mystical TV channel ;) Keep up the good work. Have enjoyed your other content!

[@drbachler]

Really cool. I enjoyed watching this. Looking forward for the next video. Keep up the good work!

[@toddbell1748]

Look! I can see my house! It's right there.keep doin what no one wants, very informative 😊

[@ocsrc]

Oh. I would love one of these

[@VictorLarsen-fy9ls]

Reminds me of an antenna from a movie Under Siege 2: Dark Territory. I checked, in the film the antenna was much smaller, and maybe not even real judging by the shape, rather it was created so compact for the stage.

[@ShainAndrews]

I have not seen one of those in a minute. We used to set those up as demo's for potential customers. Very rural area and needless to say a lot of people were skeptical. Eventually we stopped and just assembled a dish on a 4' concrete pad that we could slide on and off a trailer. It was a rare day when we would have to retrieve a dish. Especially before anything was scrambled. I don't remember exactly what we paid for ours... but I remember it being more than a solid 8' fiberglass dish. Oh wow... look at that! You even have the old school "tracker" boxes for those customers that upgraded to electric dish positioning instead of the manual screw jack. 4:05 That absolutely can be fixed. Minor stuff for a weld shop.

[@Freakoutski]

That thing reminds me so much of the umbrella E.T. used to phone home.

[@GoldSeals]

I dont know if you remember the late Robert Luly?I worked for satellite supply in north miami beach in the 1980's,We had the first luly portable antenna a flexible mesh was gold plated,We also had the first 8 ball antenna made out of 1x2 furring strip,.I still have a couple of Luly Spectrum analyzers

[@scottk8245R]

Glad this worked out for you. Thanks for sharing 👌

[@jameskelly1680]

Looks a lot like the one that they used on the surface of the moon for Apollo television transmissions during EVAs.

[@___aZa___]

I just love your channel!

[@jbetnar]

Fun video. I still have a 10ft C band Bud running. All I can say is you may be surprised what a slight adjustment on your feed focal depth and skew can do. Make sure your f/d setting on your feedhorn is correct. Just play with it and see how strong you can peak your signal.

[@pierreretief]

Really really enjoy your videos! Keep up the great work and thanks!

[@little-wytch]

I like your portable briefcase setup. Have you tried the HAK RF One SDR? It can do anything from 1MHz up to 6GHz. Throw one of those into a kit like that, and a few other portable stealth antennas into the bag with that dish, and you got yourself quite a listening (or broadcasting) post that you can move around with relative ease. I recommend one of those long wire antennas that you can chuck up into a tree for listening to SW and even some MW range. There's still plenty of interesting traffic down in SW.

[@saveitforparts]

Haven't tried the HackRF yet, need to save up for that!

[@little-wytch]

@@saveitforparts lol yeah me too. I did get to try one out that a friend had though, that's why I think it's so awesome and worth adding to a kit like that. Good luck to us both lol.

[@bob_mosavo]

@@saveitforparts Save up for the T41 EP while you're at it. It's a 20W SDR ham transceiver ❗ They are supposed to have kits out any day now 🤩

[@JosephCentkoCrowsNest]

@@little-wytch An excellent start for the curious would be HAMSAT Ham Radio operators have been working with satellites for decades and are a great source of knowledge for communicating with satellites.

[@JosephCentkoCrowsNest]

How to Pull Images from Satellites in Orbit (NOAA 15,18,19 and METEOR M2) HAK RF:kzbin.info/www/bejne/mZumnYekj5mLnpY

[@bobbyepps1356]

How neat is that!

[@rudysanjaya17]

amazing satelite dish ❤

[@mustafahasan957]

This is not just a C-band dish , you could receive Ku-band frequencies with it too and it'll work very well with satellites that have low coverage in your area Here in middle east we have many Ku and C-band satellite channels, i can receive with my 140cm more than 36 satellite with thousands of channels

[@saveitforparts]

I have a few other feedhorns and LNBs I want to try with this. We don't have as many free satellite channels in North America but I could use it for weather satellites too.

[@RandomRetr0]

Pretty neat! Had no idea there was anything still on C-Band!!!

[@gorak9000]

There's TONS of stuff still on cband - most cable channels are still distributed from the broadcaster to the cable companies by c-band (though some have gone to fiber or IP delivery now)

[@TheZombieSaints]

Ohh that would make a brilliant directional wifi antenna with a few mods lol. Cool video

[@alicemoon9008]

No Comment’s - Great 👍🏼 Job ….. Hi 👋 from Chertanovo Chopper’s Custom Club ….. Moscow City 🌆 ….. Russia 🇷🇺 …..

[@128MrRon]

Hey 👋!!! I love ❤️ the dish…Now what you need is my old new stock C band receiver with descrambler and new low c feed horn….

[@michaellichter4091]

That's a cool antenna, I also use the good V8 satellite meter. The video was interesting, I didn't even know that NASA broadcasts TV via satellite.

[@stargazer7644]

That 1700 MHz is the LO freq of the output of the LNB, not the receive freq.

[@SolarLantern424]

This was great! Loved seeing it open out. I noticed you were only getting horizontal polarisation so maybe something was wrong with the skew you were describing, as the lnb will probably contain a horizontal antenna and a vertical one. I know if you try again and work hard at it you will get nasa tv coming in loud and clear. I don't think it's just the snow causing issues, you just need to get it exactly on the satellite and there's plenty of room for fine adjustments on your dish.

[@DirtyPlumbus]

Worst umbrella ever! 😂 Very cool. 👍

[@paulperry7091]

Yea, pretty cool in the snowbank...

[@Gkitchens1]

Lol seems like a really hard way to do stuff you can watch for free on youtube, and yet, really cool at the same time.

[@ocsrc]

You have the asmuth the elevation the focal depth which should be set and the SKU and the declination

[@gorak9000]

That mount only has azimuth elevation and skew - there's no declination there because it's not a tracking mount. A polar mount, which tracks the dish across the Clark Belt using a linear actuator has polar angle, declination (which together give you the elevation), azimuth of the whole mount (has to point due south), polar "hour angle" (which is basically the axis the linear actuator moves the dish between satellites). On a polar mount, there's no skew adjustment, as you adjust it once, and the dish skews naturally as it rotates on the polar axis.

[@ocsrc]

@@gorak9000 I used to have a horizon to horizon motor mount C-band dish I could get from 5 W to 138 W It was AWESOME

[@gorak9000]

@@ocsrc I have a brand new never installed Houston tracker H-H mount in my garage, and at least one other used H-H mount outside. I definitely couldn't ever hit 5W though, there's some big stupid rock in the way. I can hit 180W and beyond over to 166E realistically. I don't think too many people in North America can say they've watched ABC Australia by c-band satellite! On the east side, 53W _might_ be do-able. I can get 55W, but there's trees and stuff in the way.

[@ocsrc]

@@gorak9000 55 and 53 I think I remember a few HD fashion channels I used to watch and Asian HD channels. A lot of the satellites down under 50 W are circular. I had a quad LNB that did Linear and Circular. I had a V-Box that controlled the motor and a Diseq switch that controlled which LNB output I used. I really miss my dishes I moved and I got sick and bedridden and I don't do much of anything anymore. I am pretty depressed I just lay in bed watching TV or KZbin

[@saveitforparts]

Talking about trees reminds me of a neighbor back in Alaska setting up his satellite dish. He had the receiver and TV out on the deck with a case of beer, and his buddy had the chainsaw. He'd look at the signal strength and point out which tree to cut down next 😆

[@johnhodgkiss9882]

That thing would be great for radio astronomy.

[@saveitforparts]

I need to figure out some motors and a mount for it (or for the rigid one). I have some of the old 24V actuators but they're pretty rusty.

[@johnhodgkiss9882]

@@saveitforparts you static mount it. Point at one point in the sky. Measure the hydrogen line and as the earth moves it will pick up objects as it passes the antenna.

[@CheapSushi]

Hah it really does look like something out of some 70s Sci-Fi. Cool project.

[@analogdesigner-Jay]

That dish antenna was invented by Bob Luly in the early 1980s.

[@jgramsey]

Wondered if anybody would bring Bob Luly. I have one of Luly's antennas and every now and then bring it out to show some history. I made sat receivers back in the early 80's under the Sat-tec and Prostar names. Sold tens of thousands of them!

[@analogdesigner-Jay]

@@jgramsey John, I remember you well. I met you around 1981 at an early TVRO show in Anaheim, CA. You also gave a lecture on satellite receivers and demodulators. I remember asking you about how a delay line demod worked. You had designed many products and it's too bad that there's fewer hobbyists nowadays.

[@carlosdavila4164]

excelente trabajo saludos desde Colombia muy interesante

[@v1x4z]

Also doubles as a cute parasol when held upside down

[@martinlatvian5538]

When I was in the military playing with Harris and antenas I felt like I know everything. I found Your channel and understood that I understand shit.

[@philstrons]

I love your satellite content

[@mike97525]

THANK YOU, I really enjoy this content😎😎

[@runforitman]

8:28 something I do to my stuff, that has terrible battery life, is I'll replace the battery with a stepdown regulator, and then have a plug on the case (or hanging out cause mounting is hard), so I can plug in any battery or external power source. I'm not sure what that finder has, but I assume it only has battery power and charging.

[@runforitman]

if you have room, you can also add a switch between internal and external power, if you don't want to sacrifice the form factor all the time

[@saveitforparts]

I might have to swap the battery on the thing, the one it came with really is terrible. It charges from USB and won't turn on while it's charging.

[@Ztbmrc1]

Cool dish! Wonder if you could receive and transmit on the Q0 100 ham satellite with it, but I am not sure you can get it at all in the US. It is geostationary at some 5 degr east.

[@saveitforparts]

I think that one is out of range for me unfortunately!

[@Ztbmrc1]

@@saveitforparts Í have just checked its footprint, and only the north east point of Brazil is within the QO-100 footprint. The US is completely outside it :(

[@saveitforparts]

That's what I thought. I remember reading something about trying it from Nova Scotia but I don't know if that ever succeeded. I'll just have to get a setup for tracking the ISS and Hamsats I guess!

[@mikeokeefe2014]

Very .. Very cool ...reminds me of the old movie umbrella size military satellite phones 😅

[@originaldcjensen]

I have been idly thinking about finding a solid metal big dish and either making a fountain or a heck of a fire pit.

[@saveitforparts]

I've heard of people doing gazebo roofs with them, or solar cookers. Lots of fun ideas :-)

[@Raketenclub]

don't let the snow melt! put the dish on the snow hill.! :D

[@raydall3734]

Always wanted one of those.

[@joetri1970]

The dish is cool it reminds me of the older 007 movies.

[@jmd1743]

I would love to see you set up a retro C-band satellite TV setup.

[@saveitforparts]

It's on the to-do list, although I'd probably spend more time doing other stuff with it than watching TV.

[@daviddavidson1372]

I installed a ton of c- band stuff in the 80's. Nice food up dish. The tracker 4 satellite control was the nicest one they came out with. Toshiba trx series receivers drake esr 240 324 all good for parts now.. Nice pile of old relics. Brings back a lot of memories. Great video.

[@linuxdriver]

Nice dish

[@romolo484]

If that mountan of snow aint comming closer.... You have to bring that satellite dish to the mountain!

[@cajuisland]

Nice Setup. Please can you inform the company that sells the Cyberex CN-7500 Folding C-Band Satellite Dish

[@saveitforparts]

I think Cyberex went under in the 80s. These guys apparently sell a modern version, but they don't list the price so you'll have to contact them: www.sub-lunar.com

[@cajuisland]

@@saveitforparts thank you.

[@ProjectGeek1]

I was flipping through your videos yesterday because I said to myself 'He said he would be working on C band sometime...did I miss it?' then....you upload this.

[@saveitforparts]

Yep, I also still have the rigid dish leaning up against the garage for the neighbors to enjoy, I'll get around to that.... definitely.... sometime :-)

[@mattparker9726]

9:40 put the antenna ON TOP OF THE SNOW PILE!!! OMG!

[@DRNEGOLICIS]

been looking for one of these. im in RV living so portable is a must.

[@saveitforparts]

They seem to be available here but I'm not sure of the price: sub-lunar.com/products Otherwise the little RV domes for Dish network / DirecTV show up on Craigslist and Facebook for ~$50-$100 sometimes.

[@DRNEGOLICIS]

@@saveitforparts will the small ones do fta? I dont see them doing c band....

[@stevec5000]

I've had one of those dishes since the '80's and never used it! LOL

[@saveitforparts]

They're pretty fun! I can see it being useful for ham stuff and weather satellite stuff as well as boring old TV.

[@-HustleUnion-]

that thing is pretty cool

[@youtubeaccount931]

Thats awesome. I'd love to play with something like that

[@itwasrightthere]

I’d love that!

[@systemloc]

Nice find! I'm totally jealous of your RF lab. Is this old footage you posted, or where the heck is it snowing that much in April! 73 from Florida

[@saveitforparts]

I filmed this a few weeks ago, we just had more snow here in Minnesota but it's supposed to start melting aaaaany day now!

[@fangthewarrior]

I can't wait to see more of this :O

[@kainhall]

the GOES series are really cool stuff for weather nerds.....

[@saveitforparts]

Yes! I've done a little bit with those satellites, I want to set up one of my dishes as a more permanent downlink. Sure I could get it all online, but it's more fun to get it straight off the satellite and beautify my roof with more antennas 😂

[@ueberRegenbogen]

Those old analog receivers aren't going to be of much (if any) use anymore, as i think just about everything has gone digital, now. The Drake isn't even LNB compatible; it's from the LNA days.

[@Superkuh2]

On a sunny day you can put an aluminum tape cross on the dish surface and use the sun's reflection to find the focal point.

[@iamgriff]

I’m researching rail karts, now I’m trying to figure out how to make my old RV satellite talk to Mars😂

[@TheZombiewaffles]

could you make a giant directional wifi broadcaster out of the big dish to throw your home wifi across town? would be kinda fun to see how far you could push it

[@saveitforparts]

Back in Alaska we got it to go 2 miles over water, with a pringles can. That was pretty fun :-)

[@tissuepaper9962]

@@saveitforparts that's wicked

[@p4rsec]

where do you hunt for used satellite dishes? or new ones i guess. i’d love to get a dish to play around with but i haven’t done my hyper focus research stint on them yet… plus i still need to set up my new HF antenna

[@saveitforparts]

I find old ones on Craigslist / Facebook Marketplace. Or someone pointed out a place selling new fold-up dishes here: www.sub-lunar.com

[@ocsrc]

Those programs stations that looks like the back hall for The weather Channel

[@rocketman221projects]

That dish would be cool for some portable ham radio microwave operation. I wonder if it would work for some 10GHz EME?

[@lordgarak]

That thing is so sick looking. I want one. May have to figure out how to scratch build one...

[@saveitforparts]

Someone just sent me a link to a modern version, no prices listed though: sub-lunar.com/products

[@Rebar77_real]

Imagine the large one as a cathedral ceiling somewhere in Sand Land, heh heh. Like you don't have enough going on. :p

[@n1kkri]

This brought back some memories. I just got rid of my Paraclispe 12 foot dish. Have not used it since the early 90's but it was a lot of fun in the early 80's. Back then there used to be sites listing what they found some very interesting PPV events in the clear. Are there any such sites today?

[@saveitforparts]

I'm sure there are some sites out there, some folks are really into chasing live sports and other events, but I'm more into weather data and stuff :-)

[@brandona1370]

Ax Man!!!! I haven't been there since 2019!

[@saveitforparts]

Sounds like you need to make a return trip!

[@Rotary_Phone]

If all else fails, you could take that fabric from the satellite, and stich together a classic "Foot Clan" costume from the 1980s TMNT movie...

[@KC-nd7nt]

This is all new to me but very interesting

[@rkmklz7562]

Cool Dish....I wonder if it will work inside the apartment 😮?