Oh, this is fascinating. Just a bit disappointing that the article doesn't mention at all why it's possible for random people in Brazil to access these satellites.
> Oh, this is fascinating. Just a bit disappointing that the article doesn't mention at all why it's possible for random people in Brazil to access these satellites.
From the article, to answer the hardware side of your question, which was mine as well.
> To use the satellite, pirates typically take an ordinary ham radio transmitter, which operates in the 144- to 148-MHZ range, and add a frequency doubler cobbled from coils and a varactor diode. That lets the radio stretch into the lower end of FLTSATCOM's 292- to 317-MHz uplink range. All the gear can be bought near any truck stop for less than $500. Ads on specialized websites offer to perform the conversion for less than $100. Taught the ropes, even rough electricians can make Bolinha-ware.
The Fleetcom satellites are, if I recall, just “bent pipe” satellites. There receive on one frequency and retransmit on another with zero logic onboard. Analog, digital, whatever. If you wanted them to encrypt their broadcasts, you’d just encrypt the signal before transmitting on the ground and it would happily rebroadcast your encrypted signal back to earth.
matheusmoreira|5 years ago
jplayer01|5 years ago
oyebenny|5 years ago
This is my question as well.
ColanR|5 years ago
> To use the satellite, pirates typically take an ordinary ham radio transmitter, which operates in the 144- to 148-MHZ range, and add a frequency doubler cobbled from coils and a varactor diode. That lets the radio stretch into the lower end of FLTSATCOM's 292- to 317-MHz uplink range. All the gear can be bought near any truck stop for less than $500. Ads on specialized websites offer to perform the conversion for less than $100. Taught the ropes, even rough electricians can make Bolinha-ware.
tonyarkles|5 years ago