ESPN Sports Center

The PacSat kit

Camp Arifjan ,   Kuwait

September 9 - 18, 2004

   

	Here is our dish farm out back.  The dish on the right, up on the platform, is the BT dish.  This dish is transmitting our signal directly to Bristol Connecticut on a satellite called NSS7.  It is up on a platform because NSS7 is 9 degrees above the horizon and there is another building just barely in the way.  The center dish is the Pacsat dish.  I am also transmitting to Bristol.  I am on a different satellite named Telstar 12.  With two transmit paths we are redundant.  If something should happen to one dish, or the other, a second source is instantly available in the Bristol control room.  From this location Telstar 7 is 14 degrees above the horizon.  Just enough over the building I didn't need the riser.  The round dish on the left is an army dish we had to borrow so we could receive ESPN from the states.  It is also looking at Telstar 12.  I had to use 2 separate dishes because these types of dishes are made to Transmit or receive but not both at the same time.
	Here is a shot of the Pacsat dish.  One day the wind got to blowing and I had to tie down the feed horn out in front of the dish.  In the wind the feed horn would move around enough to bounce me off the satellite.  Tyeing it down solved the problem.  The gray boxes just behind the dish are the amplifiers.  They were getting so hot on the test days that they were almost shutting down due to the high temperatures.  The army came by and set an air conditioner behind the amp boxes.  The silver tubes route the air directly into the amps.  There are more tubes to exhaust the hot air away.  Thanks to the Army for this A/C unit and the creative air flow, it saved the show.
	Here is Jeff setting up the gear inside.
	I had to have a way to monitor 4 receivers and my own signal.  With this bundle of wires I could barrel together any of 5 sources into the color monitor.  Generally there is a nice switch box with buttons for this purpose.
	Here is my finished stack of gear.  completer with borrowed video monitor, audio meters, and audio speakers.  The 3 silver units are the Power-Vu receivers used to bring ESPN to Kuwait.  The 2 black units and more receivers for a high quality circuit from bristol and my local RF loop.  The blue boxes are the digital encoders used to help send the signal back to the US.
	Here is the whole satellite crew.  Jeff in the red shirt, Luk Huilmand in the blue jacket, and Tom Spiekstra in the white shirt.  Luk is from Belgium and let everyone know it.  Tom is Dutch and took the great panoramic pictures.  The both run the BT dish.
	Here are the BT guys in front of their gear.

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