Satellite Truck

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A satellite truck or Transportable Earth Station (TES) is a vehicle with satellite uplink capibilities, usually used for microwave radio transmissions (Typically Ku and C band) from earth to a man-made repeater put in orbit around the earth. Used for television broadcasting and data traffic from remote locations or from a stationary 'teleport'. Also see 'Ku band' or 'C band' uplink trucks and equipment. If military see Ka or X band.

Satellite trucks now have state-of-the-art on-board television production capabilities, usually from one to eight cameras. By use of these combination uplink and production vehicles, on-location production costs are lower than using tractor-trailer type, production only, vehicles and a separate uplink vehicle.

The concept of the combination uplink and production vehicle was pioneered by SDTV (Satellite Digital Teleproductions) in the early 1990's. This is now the norm for most of the larger uplink or satellite trucks in use today.

Smaller uplink only vehicles are mostly used for Satellite News Gathering type news applications (SNG) or for live broadcast of elements created outside the smaller vehicle, by a separate facility.