I saw an ad on Craigslist a few weeks ago for some Free to Air satellite receivers that were being sold. The price was right and I’ve long been interested in seeing what I could pick up freely and legally from the skies, so I bought the receivers and later went back for some bigger dishes.
I had the day off Friday, so I set it all up, tuning in Galaxy 19 at 97°W, which is a satellite that carries a few hundred mostly-international channels. After some brief fiddling with the aim of the dish I was watching Al Jazeera straight from space. It was actually the moment I first heard that Hosni Mubarak had resigned.
This is really cool stuff, though there isn’t much in English worth viewing on this particular satellite. I plan to set up other dishes to pull in other, more interesting satellites, but for now I’ve proven that it works. In time I should be enjoying all types of radio and television beamed freely from space.