Satgen 29 18th October 89 BSB Sat TV is on the air. For the past week the BSB engineers have been running individual transponders, and at least one pair of adjacent transponders. Operating times seem to be roughly 0900 to 1830 BST Mon to Fri, with a couple of hours operating on saturday morning. Channels heard so far are on 11785 and 11865 MHz. The chan on 11938 has not yet been heard, and 12015 ,and 12092 MHz are not covered by my analysis receiver. Transmissions have featured test signals, not pictures, and have been 45 dbs over noise on a 90cm dish 1.3 dB LNB looking obliquely through a window. So, far from needing one of the fabled SQUAERIALS , all you need do is pinch the kitchen wok and point the LNB at it. Format is DMAC (Type D Multiplexed Analog Components).On a PAL TV you see strips of B+W video down either edge of the screen with nothing but noise across the middle of your screen. If you use a conventional Connexions type set top unit to take your LNB output (normaly 950/1170 MHz) as input and provide PAL TV output, you need to extract the wideband video and feed it to a special DMAC demodulator which will output a signal to your PAL TV only if it has a composite video Euro plug to receive it. Most ordinary TVs don't. But that way you lose the DMAC improvements. To benefit fully from DMAC, you need a DMAC Rx not a converter and with that you are said to get quality superior to Japanese High Definition TV. Unfortunately no one seems to be selling DMAC TVs just yet. BSB say they will start a regular programme on one channel in a few weeks time. Meanwhile you can listen to their test wobbulators as they check out transponder bandwidths and mutual interference. Az 211 El 21.5 from GM , or , 214 Az 24.5 El from London approx. Oscar 13 has as most people know had a housekeeping computer failure. You are asked not to attempt to use it presently. Amsat need time to find out how serious the damage is, what form it takes , and what has caused it. Amsat members who study the Van Allen Radiation Belts were puzzled when Oscar 13 was placed in an orbit with its perigee of 2450 kms putting it firmly in the lower Van Allen Belt. The Soviets keep their very similar Molniya birds at perigees around 600 kms far below the belts. Amsat Oscar 10 had a complete computer failure because it suffered radiation damage due to its very high 3900 kms perigee, and Radiosport 8 at only 1800 kms perigee had a similar radiation induced computer/control failure. Has Oscar 13 suffered the same fate because of its high perigee ? It will be doubly sad if it has, because Amsat sponsors supplied special radiation resistant chips for AO13. UFO 432.881 MHz continues to provide excellent setting up signals for builders of the G3RUH Fuji modem who are preparing for Packsat.There are good orbits every afternoon at 112 minute intervals between 1400 and 2000 utc, which have allowed the problem of AFC hunting between modem and the ancient ICOM 451 used here, to be fixed. 73 de John GM4IHJ@GB7SNE