Receiving Russian Satellite TV from the Express AM8 Satellite and watching the Hacking and Jamming Attempts

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the EU has banned the broadcast of Russian TV channels. This is caused Russia to move their satellite broadcasts from internationally owned satellites, to their own "Express AM8" geostationary satellite.

The Russian satellite can be received from Europe and parts of South America. What's interesting in particular is the hacking and jamming attempts going on on this particular satellite. These breaches are likely to be from individual people or by the Ukrainian Ministry of Strategic Communication. An example of a hack by Ukrainian Ministry of Strategic Communication on 5 January 2023.

Express AM8 transponder 11647V was hacked today at 6:30 PM by Ukrainian Ministry of Strategic Communication. A New Year's address by Ukrainian President V. Selensky was shortly broadcast in Ukrainian on all program positions of the T2-MI transponder.

Alex 'Happysat' has written to us with the following information. The full guide to receiving TV from the satellite, and information about the satellite and signals and modulations used on the satellite is on GitHub at https://github.com/happysat/Express-AM8.

You may know that here in Europe a number of controversial Russian, Syrian and Iranian (news) channels are not allowed to be broadcast due to sanctions against Russia (everything) and Iran (Press TV).

The Russians moved most of the channels (Rossiya 24, RTR Planeta, NTV Mir, Perivy Kanal, Press-TV) to their own satellite Express AM8 some time ago.

Since it is not a normal DTH satellite such as Astra or Hotbird, everything happens there (jamming / hacks) which is interesting for many (dx) viewers.

Because it is relatively easy to receive in Europe and parts of South America, I have created a GitHub website with some useful tips and tricks.

Not only in terms of content, but also the technical side of it, the different modulations broadcast techniques T2-MI (unfortunately gone for a while after the hacks…) but also just old-fashioned DVB-S signals, Telemetry and some transponders (only symbol rate lower than >2000ks) are even without the need for a satellite receiver.

For example with an SDR radio and the AM-SAT program what the radio amateurs use on Eshail2.

And that a '14 west setup' can easily be made, which does not have to be expensive at all.

This is the website https://github.com/happysat/Express-AM8/blob/main/README.md