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It would fill a volume of books to describe the Satellite Industry,
and how it works. If you're like me, you are only interested in one
thing. How do I install a mobile Direcway system and make it
work?

Fair enough... here are the basics.

Okay… You probably know that Direcway (spelled without a "T") is a Two-Way send
and receive satellite system. This means that it both receives data from a Satellite and
TRANSMITS TO THE SAME SATELLITE 22,300 miles in orbit above the Earth's equator.

The G-11 (Galaxy 11) satellite resides above the 91st longitudinal line of the Planet.
Longitude lines are the "long lines" that travel vertically on the planet.
Latitude lines travel horizontally. Longitude 91 passes through Mississippi.

This satellite has a very large footprint and covers a good portion of both
Mexico and Canada.

G4R (Galaxy 4 Right) resides above the 99th longitudinal line of the planet that passes
through Texas. G4R does not extend into Mexico, but covers Canada very well.

SatMex 5 resides above the 117th longitudinal line of the planet that passes
through the eastern boarder of California. It covers most of America and
Mexico, but leaves Canadians alone.

Each satellite beams down a "FOOTPRINT" onto the Earth and this footprint is the
coverage area the Direcway satellite will work. Click on the link below to take a look
at what a satellite footprint looks like for the three Direcway Satellites.

Direcway customers may use several "Geosynchronous"satellites in orbit around the
planet. Geosynchronous means the satellite is 22,300 miles above the equator and
orbits around the Earth at the same speed that the earth rotates... which means the
satellite stays in the same place in the sky, and never appears to move.

DirecWay signals transmit on the KU frequency band of the electromagnetic
spectrum. This is the same frequency used in radar detectors... and if fact,
radar detectors can cause interference with the Direcway dishes on Frequency
990 MHz (Megahertz) ... which is one of the frequencies used by Direcway.

Satellites use TRANSPONDERS to communicate with the Earth. A Transponder
picks up on a small slice of the KU Frequency Band. The Satellite has "Receive"
transponders and "Transmit" transponders. When you make a request to the
Satellite for a web page, you transmit to a receive transponder on the Satellite.
The Satellite then sends it down to Earth with a "Transmit" transponder.

Transponders may transmit and receive on Horizontally and Vertically planes.
This effectively doubles the potential of each transponder's bandwidth making it
very cost effective for Hughes.

There are normally 24 or 36 transponders per satellite.

Common Transponders (or frequencies) for the Direcway system are 1110 MHz,
and 1250 MHz.

In order for a 2-way dish to communicate properly with the satellite in orbit, the
signal that transmits from the dish must be precisely timed to be received by the
Satellite. A transmission from Texas arrives at the satellite faster than a dish
located in Canada because Texas is physically closer to the satellite.

Prior to DIRECWAY, Hughes created "DirecPC", which was the One-Way satellite system that used a
dial-up connection for the upload connection, and a satellite dish for the download connection. By doing
this, Hughes was able to provide users with high-speed downloads that were much faster than dial-up alone.

Okay... now on to the orbiting Direcway satellites. If you remember these things, you'll look like an expert
in much of the 2-way satellite Internet industry.

The other issue for a satellite dish to communicate properly with a satellite
in orbit is the fact that a satellite will transmit on a vertical wave, and a
horizontal wave. This effectively doubles the transmission ability of the
satellite system, however, this also means that you need to perfectly
align the satellite dish so that its vertical and horizontal angles match
the satellite in orbit it's locking to. This is done by moving the SKEW
of the dish face to the satellite in orbit.

Cross Polarization simply means the process of SKEWing the dish
face so that it is aligned with the orbiting satellite. It is sometimes
called Isolation because when you are moving the skew, you're
trying to isolate the signal to be as strong as possible.

While there are other Direcway satellites, three are listed below to help you understand
satellite names and longitudes. The longitude of a satellite never changes.