listening in: catch me if you can!
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by The LNA Master

Are you tired of watching scrambled video from HBO and the Movie Channel,
etc.? And you don't want to watch Dr. Gene Scott or Jerry Falwell or any of
the other TV preachers? Do you feel your satellite dish is going to waste?
Well, here's something fun you can do with it.

In addition to receiving video and audio signals, your satellite dish can
be used as a wiretapping device. Yes, some of you can actually wiretap from
your own living room - a fact you probably didn't know. Wiretapping is 
illegal, but as the title of this article says, catch me if you can. It's
virtually impossible to detect this particular brand of listening in.

All you need for this project is your basic home satellite dish antenna,
also known as TVRO or televison receive only. What you need to do is turn to
the AT&T satellite known as Telstar 301. You'll notice between Channel 20
and 23 (that is, Channel 21 and 22) you'll see a blank screen as if there
were a station there. You won't hear anything except maybe an occasional
garbled sound.

This is what you do to l i sten in on phone cal ls.

Take a general coverage shortwave receiver (covering between AM broadcast band
and 30 megacycles). Connect the antenna input of your shortwave to the video
out terminal on your satellite receiver. Tune the shortwave receiver on
lower side band (LSB) anywhere between the broadcast band (1.6 megahertz) and
7.5 megahertz. Make sure your satellite receiver is either on Channel 21
or 22. You will pick up more calls to Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Alaska, and the
Caribbean than you ever thought possible. Who would have dreamed there would
have been that many phone calls to listen to? About every 3.5 kilohertz
there is a phone conversation. If you do not hear a phone conversation, you 
will hear a continuous tone of 2600 hertz. Tune your receiver to where
you believe 2600 is coming in perfectly, then listen for a click followed
by MF (blue box) tones followed by a ring. You will then be able to Iisten in
on AT&T calls to area code 808, 809, and 907.

For frequencies above 4.1 megahertz, switch to upper side band (USB). Also,
you can tune in Channel 8 of Telstar 301. It appears that Channel 8 on your
standard satellite receiver box switches on your standard satellite
receiver box switches to the US Sprint service from the mainland to Hawaii.
Sprint codes can be (and have been) gotten successfully by listening to
the calls. Interesting conversations are all over the place, such as the man
from Long Island who has two wives and was promising the second wife over the
phone that she could stay in his house in Hawaii until he "got rid of"
wife number one.

Telstar 301 can be found at 96 W on the satellite dish. Spacenet 2, which
is located at 69 W is all US Sprint. Domestic calls as well as overseas
calls can be monitored.

Other interesting satellites are ASC1 at 128 W, Westar 2 at 79 W, and
Comstar D4 at 76 W. On these, simply tune across until you hit a blank
channel that looks like it's carrying a signal. Then tune the 
shorrtwave receiver anywhere between 1.6 and 7.5 megahertz. If the
conversation doesn't straighten up, switch to LSB or USB on the shortwave.