I worked with Sydney Pike who was the then President of CNN International.  Sydney Pike helped create CNN and was a very close confident of Ted Turner.

Our mission was simple, CNN needed to sell their news content which was available on various satellites  used by the US Government and STT my company needed to sell satellite systems.  It was my initiative to contact CNN and to open a dialog regarding mutual interests and Sidney Pike was the person with whom I discussed how we could work together.  I went to Atlanta to meet with him and later we worked together on a project to promote CNN in Africa.  All of our clients wanted CNN and the signal was being scrambled by AFRTS (Armed Forces Radio and Television System).  I thought that if we could jointly promote selling CNN then we would get the satellite business.  Sydney Pike responded by inviting us to participate in a seminar in Nairobi Kenya.  Here we would invite all of the television station managers to attend a seminar.  Sydney would talk about CNN International and I would talk in technical and commercial terms about they could get the signal. 

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For this project Telesat International supplied to System Technology Trading a 33' Azimuth/Elevation mount cassegrain feed satellite antenna along with several receivers, houston antenna azimuth/elevation control modules, low noise amplifiers, block down converters as well as line and polarization switching devises.

The original system was on working display at the Middle East Communications Exhibition in Manama Bahrain.

My role was to create and execute marketing and promotional activites to find customers for Telesat International, Negotiate sales and carry out installations of the systems for the clients.  This required me to learn significant technical details regarding microwave/satellite communications, logistical/legal requirements for shipment out of the USA of high tech equipment, knowledge of construction and assembly techniques for electronic systems and the ability to work in extreme conditions for the construction and assembly of highly technical systems.

The antenna was mounted in Zulaq near the beach and was complete with a control room which housed the tracking system and electronics.

This system was a 24ft polar mount antenna with the control electronics located in an adjacent building.  The projected consisted of installation, upgrade and maintenance of the mechanical and electronic systems.

This system was fabricated in Bahrain and was unique in that it was an offset antenna of 33ft in width and 15ft height.

The system was later upgraded to be autotracking enabling the antenna to adjust itself for geo-insyncronous satellites.