Dxer budapest

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218 219TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine — 02-03/2012 — www.TELE-satellite.com www.TELE-satellite.com — 02-03/2012 — TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine

Live your Dream!

•Receiveseverysatellitethancanpossiblybereceived.•Acquiredalmostallofhis50dishesinusedcondition.•Interestedinthevariousdishreceptiontechnologies•Abletofabricatemissingcomponents

Dishes on the roof? Dishes on the wall? It almost looks like they’re growing out of the house. Sure enough, it’s György’s antenna farm. He’s a satellite enthusiast from Budapest, Hungary.

DXer REPORT Satellite Enthusiast in Budapest, Hungary

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220 TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine — 02-03/2012 — www.TELE-satellite.com

A Fulltime Satellite DXer

Can you find György? He’s standing on the first floor between two dishes. Two large 2.2-meter antennas are leaning on the garden wall, unfortunately, there’s no place to install these monster dishes as yet.

What could be better in life than actu-ally living your dream? What could be better for a satellite enthusiast than to erect as many dishes as he wants to? It’s exactly this dream that György in Budapest is living right now. He has managed to install 11 satellite antennas on the roof of his house plus another 20 dishes on the side of his house and on a secondary wall. “Here in my ga-rage there are more dishes”, he says to us on a visit to his home in Budapest’s district 13, not too far from the center.

György (that’s George in English) has installed not only normal antennas, but he can show us all the different dish variants that have existed over time, from offset and prime focus dishes to double-reflector antennas and even unusual models such as a dish with a magnifying glass reflector.

He doesn’t even want to attempt to calculate how much all of this has cost him: “It has to be several thousand Euros”. Actually, he only bought just a few components new for his incredible antenna array. “I’m always scanning through eBay; many people have no idea what they’re selling and very often I can get dishes and other components very cheaply.” One of the highlights of all this is the EGIS rotors that he has. They are highly professional motors and were very popular in the early days of satellite reception since they were able to move large 1.8-meter anten-nas. György has five of these motors all of which are in use: “The first two I bought brand new but the others I managed to acquire very inexpensively through eBay.”

György first started playing around with satellite reception in 1980: “Back then the Olympics were in Moscow and I was there when the TV headquarters was built.” Hungary had delivered sev-eral hundred TV monitors and György was there when the first satellite dish-

DXer REPORT Satellite Enthusiast in Budapest, Hungary

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222 223TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine — 02-03/2012 — www.TELE-satellite.com www.TELE-satellite.com — 02-03/2012 — TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine

es were erected in Moscow with which CNN was received. György worked for many years in Moscow: “I worked for a local authority and handled electronic communications”, he says as he thinks back to those days.

Today György is retired and can therefore spend as much time as he wants with his hobby. “A few years ago I was in the USA and bought a num-ber of large used dishes.” He packed them in a container in order to get them home; they are now all mount-ed on the wall of his home. There are six apartments in his building. “When

my neighbor moved out, I bought his apartment”, says György who then tore down the dividing wall between the two apartments. This all had a nice side ef-fect: one less person to complain about all of his dishes. “With my other neigh-bors upstairs who happen to come from Russia, I came to an agreement. They get all of their Russian TV channels from me and in return don’t complain about all the antennas”, grins György.

The vacant property next door will have a house built on it in the near fu-ture. “I already inquired about buying the apartment upstairs so that I can

1. Everything he needs to set up his dishes can be found in this weather-proof cabinet on the outside wall of his home. This includes among other things a receiver with a monitor as well as an array of tools that he uses to tighten mounting screws, loosen mounting screws to reposition a dish and/or adjust its elevation angle. A flashlight is inside the cabinet; György likes to do most of his work in the evenings. He can even connect a projection TV to his receiver: “This lets me project the TV picture onto the wall of my house making it very easy for me to adjust dishes that are located a little further away.” A projection TV for antenna alignment! Surely György is unique when it comes to this! He can even attach a laptop to the lid of this cabinet; the power cable and Internet connection are already hard-wired in place - all he has to do is connect them to his laptop. Then he can chat with his hobby colleagues via the Internet while he’s adjusting an antenna.2. György even mounted the monitor on a pull out carrier so that he can increase his viewing range to the monitor.3. The control box for the EGIS rotor can be found hidden under a rain hood.4. What is this? Sure enough, György even installed a small video camera so that he can see from inside his house how his dish is turning.

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1. György even installed antennas in his garden. Here a friend is helping him with a new mount on a 1.8-meter used fiber glass antenna.2. Everything comes together here. With a professional signal analyzer and multiple receivers, György can control all of his dishes and watch all of the TV channels.

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also install dishes on that roof.” He does have one handicap that he has to deal with: “This tree blocks my reception of THAICOM at 78.5 east!” But that’s the only obstacle that blocks his otherwise unobstructed view of the sky. “I can receive every satellite here. At the far eastern end is the EXPRESS satellite at 96.5 east that I receive with a 2.20-me-ter PFA and at the other end is a C-band satellite at 55 west.” A highlight of his antenna farm is the 1.8-meter antenna pointed at ASTRA at 28.2 east. “With this dish I can receive BBC and ITV.”

György is always building some-thing. At the moment he is working on a 1.5-meter antenna that he acquired very cheaply from somewhere: “The mount is missing so I’m building a new one myself.”

György is very handy when it comes to do-it-yourself projects and he has all the necessary tools in his workshop. But he does more than just deal with the mechanical side of things: “I’m working on programming an Internet connection for an EGIS rotor.” His goal is to be able to control this rotor re-motely via the Internet. “The control units for these rotors date back to the previous century and are written in an-cient code.”, explains György the chal-lenges involved in adapting such old technology to current times.

György lives with his dishes. He’s always on the lookout for new dishes that he can get for a very good price so that he can work on putting them back into service. He’s always testing, prob-ing and building. Once and a while he’ll actually sit down and watch TV, but for a real satellite enthusiast, watching TV is more of a side thing to do. The actual excitement is being able to receive any-thing and everything and taking advan-tage of all the necessary technology.

His true hobby is how a satellite sig-nal can be received with a dish and an LNB. He wasn’t satisfied with just a few dishes, rather, he continued to expand and fine-tune his dish farm!

1. In György’s shack: He’s fabricating a new LNB holder by himself for one of his dishes. Many of the used antennas that he buys have missing or have worn out parts or have to be retrofitted to match the size of today’s LNBs.

2. György has his large assortment of mechanical components nicely organized and includes a vast collection of screws, nuts, washers, etc.

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