Hello Jack, It might be possible to find COTS hardware. Building it is likely not the problem, it is getting it past FCC requirements that would take a bit of test equipment, effort and expense. There is probably a licensing issue or three and RF exposure stuff to be aware of to muddy up that picture.
I don't know of any commercial satellite operation out there that allows equipment other than their preferred hardware to be used, but then I have not asked. As far as commercial links (not IP related) there are a lot of receivers out there, but in the interest of increasing channel capacity and narrowing bandwidth requirements, many of the providers for broadcast have been upgrading their hardware every few years. I have dealt with some uplink hardware. I can tell you that it is not taken lightly when a signal is aimed the wrong direction or on the wrong frequency from the ground. Those doing broadcast uplinks often have hardware that samples the return signal and adjusts the uplink strength on the fly. If you want to see a few of the satellites that are up there you might take a look at http://www.n2yo.com/ I would expect there are quite a number of ham satellites up, but have not looked recently. One of the places to find out what is currently working would be http://ww2.amsat.org Although the hams have some overhead, handling typical traffic to the Internet would not be something they would do. None of the ham satellites that I am aware of are in a geostationary orbit. If he was looking for emergency communications capabilities, there are plenty of HF links and systems out there that hams have running. Compared to the Internet, they are slow, but work when other hardware doesn't. They also would not be appropriate for everyday Internet traffic. Some of those systems do tie into the Internet for email delivery. Dave KU4B On Wed, 2013-04-03 at 11:34 -0500, Jack Coats wrote: > I have a friend in West TX that wants to do a DIY satellite > transmitter/reciever. > Has anyone heard of a project to do such a thing? > > > One time I think I heard of a Ham satellite that would do a store and > forward, but that is probably not in service anymore. > > > Just curious. > > > BTW, it looks like we will be getting satellite for our home internet > soon. Settled on Excede (owns Wild Blue now, and is owned by ViaSat. > HughesNet is the only real competitor in the market). Telco won't do > DSL or anything other than dialup, and cable will do it, but the > $20,000.00 install fee is a bit steep. > > > ><> ... Jack > Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart... Colossians 3:23 > "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate" > - Henry J. Tillman > "Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." - > Albert Einstein > "You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - > Admiral Grace Hopper, USN > Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part. - Martin > Terma > -- > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "NLUG" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to nlug-talk > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "NLUG" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send > an email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
