(sorry to add even more; I just made another comment about this and I am familiar with most of these concepts.)
Actually, that would be much easier. TV stations back then mostly received shows via satellite dish. Pointing a low power directional antenna directly at the dish’s LNB would work great. Satellite transmissions weren’t strong and were rarely encrypted back then so that would theoretically be super easy if you knew your RF and deep RF knowledge was much more common place +30 years ago.
I am not sure if they used point-to-point microwave antennas back then for TV, but it would be the same concept. (Microwave antennas are typically the round, cylindrical looking, covered antennas we see all over the place today.)
The max takeover was a satellite transmission. Back then spot beams weren’t used, so as a result you could overpower the competing broadcast by just 1 Watt and ‘win’. And we weren’t talking about a thousand watts, more like 30.
Also - simply pointing a broadcast antenna at the LNB wouldn’t do much of anything. Those satellite signals were polarized either horizontally or vertically, and the position of the LNB relative to the dish and the geometry of the dish matters a lot. If you’re off by a tenth of degree on the angle, you’re not hitting the right satellite…assuming you even stayed on the arc to match geosynchronous satellites…which if you just aimed a yagi at a LNB you’re pretty much guaranteed to not have done.
Didn’t they just overpower the radio link to the broadcast site, a much lower power signal than the broadcast signal itself?
(sorry to add even more; I just made another comment about this and I am familiar with most of these concepts.)
Actually, that would be much easier. TV stations back then mostly received shows via satellite dish. Pointing a low power directional antenna directly at the dish’s LNB would work great. Satellite transmissions weren’t strong and were rarely encrypted back then so that would theoretically be super easy if you knew your RF and deep RF knowledge was much more common place +30 years ago.
I am not sure if they used point-to-point microwave antennas back then for TV, but it would be the same concept. (Microwave antennas are typically the round, cylindrical looking, covered antennas we see all over the place today.)
FWIW, it mentions in the link that the method was via overpowering the analogue microwave link between the station and the broadcast transmitter
The max takeover was a satellite transmission. Back then spot beams weren’t used, so as a result you could overpower the competing broadcast by just 1 Watt and ‘win’. And we weren’t talking about a thousand watts, more like 30.
Also - simply pointing a broadcast antenna at the LNB wouldn’t do much of anything. Those satellite signals were polarized either horizontally or vertically, and the position of the LNB relative to the dish and the geometry of the dish matters a lot. If you’re off by a tenth of degree on the angle, you’re not hitting the right satellite…assuming you even stayed on the arc to match geosynchronous satellites…which if you just aimed a yagi at a LNB you’re pretty much guaranteed to not have done.