A thread to discuss the orbital side of our Othernet hardware for Europe users. Astra 23B is located in a high orbit in the 23.5E orbital slot. It’s orbit of the earth is synchronized to the same speed the planet rotates for it’s 24 hour day so Astra 3B (and all geostationary satellites by definition) appears to hover over 23.5 degrees east longitude at 35,786 kilometers (22,236 miles) over the equator.
Astra 23B uses several phased array antennas to create a tune-able beam shape allowing it’s customers to choose several footprints; Othernet as of late 2019 is using the Ku band Europe beam below which doesn’t accurately reflect the Poland and Germany ‘hot spots’.
Astra 23B was deliverd to orbit by an Ariane 5 ECA heavy-lift launch vehicle.
We are also not using that specific pan-European beam. They have another, which is what we are on. It has two really hot spots over Germany and Poland. Beam peak for the entire transponder is 58 dBW in those two areas. It tapers down from there.
The Astra 3B Satellite is special i a way that it has 2 footprints with the same centers but different outlines. On Astra 3B at 23.5°E - LyngSat Maps they are called KU and Wide. The thing is, if you say we have local maxima over Germany and Poland, we could actually be on the KU spot, which means off-spot or DX reception may not be possible in areas where theres still wide beam coverage. Can anybody confirm which beam were actually using? The SNR values for different spots on the map (status page) may also be interesting in relation to the equipment being used (bare LNB vs. minidish vs. big dish). This way we may finally plot a true ‘service area’ for othernet.
