Satellite TV pioneer S J Birkill at his Sheffield home in 1982

Satellite TV enthusiast Steve Birkill demonstrates his C-Band and Ku-Band satellite TV equipment in 1982, seven years after his pioneering reception of the Indian TV 'SITE' experimental broadcasts from the ATS-6 satellite.
At this time Steve's day job was Transmitter Manager at the BBC's Holme Moss high power TV transmitting station. He subsequently went on to found his own electronic design business, and created tuners for the Amstrad analogue satellite set-top boxes, the SetPal Freeview digital TV adaptors and the Frontier Silicon DAB radio modules.
Thanks to Mike Pearson for the original video, and Trevor Brown for the digital capture.

[@JimGardner]

I wish I knew as much about anything as this guy knows about everything.

[@MrClingclong]

People love to mock nerds. Probably because they make themselve feel insecure.
But I love nerds, we need more and more nerds, they're brilliant!

[@myshadowisblack]

Yes he wrote for CATJ journal in 1978 or 79 and then I followed up with an two articles on how to build a Rat Race Mixer and an LNA. The transistor cost over $200.00 a piece in 1980. Stve and I attended the first cable and satellite show in theUK in 1981. We were kind of celebrities. I had the fortune to stay with Steve and his family outside of London.

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

I noticed the cartoon that shows up five minutes in that came from Saudi Arabia happens to be Sam Singer's "Bucky & Pepito". Not a very good cartoon I've seen.

[@myshadowisblack]

Here is another video that I did in 1982. We were just amazed that we could do this. When you think that the satellites were only 5 watts illuminating all of the US. Just think of a 5 watt light bulb 22,000 miles away and picking up the energy.

[@fungo6631]

I think the 5 watts was not the ERP, but the transponder power. When you add the gain, it's a lot more.

[@volkerking5932]

2,5cm wavelength means 12GHz wow a homemade LNC. 10:19 the white drop outs in the picture mean that the f0 (FM Demodulation) is not exact in the center so the white dropout occur during demodulation.

[@myshadowisblack]

There is another video uploaded by Werner Vavken "Smoke Signals to Satellite" I would hope that somone has some video from other pioneers of the day. Bob Luly was also a big inspiration to everyone.

[@Nicholas_Chris]

Are you talking about this video? : th-cam.com/video/QNtLZB8a6fw/w-d-xo.html

[@nguyendailam6703]

No idea what he is talking about but fascinating none the less.

[@kyle8952]

if only he had put together a secam decoder, could've got the soviet telly in full colour.

[@midvodian]

Look at the later videos on my channel -- the 'Blue Peter' one for instance...

[@MediaWatchDawg]

Wowser! 1:50 hose clamps.

[@ppc7457]

awesome

[@simontaylor4832]

What the chuff did he say?!!

[@fungo6631]

Did he ever troon out?