No Signal Quality except on Astra 19 degrees East

[BGonaSTICK]

Stay safe up there

[sat_man]

Hi all,

Would you believe that I still have not got my system going yet, despite spending many many hours on my garage roof. I can locate and lock onto Astra 19 degrees quite quickly now but still cannot pick up anything else??????? I get 60% signal strength with 90+ signal quality on Astra so the LNB / Dish should be OK??

I fitted my Motek motor back onto the pole and secured the dish to it. I set the Motek guage to 19 degrees East then moved the dish to pick up Astra (good quality)before tightening the bolts. I then used the GOTO on my Humax 5300 to move the motek / dish to 13 degrees east and picked up nothing (no hotbird). I used the Motek guide to identify the elevation 37.5 for my 52.5 longtitude - ex MultiMap) . I also set the declination as to the Motek Guide so as I am firmly locked onto Astra I should be able to find other satellites such as Hotbird. As I am getting good signal strenth / quality on ASTRA then surely if cannot be the dish / LNB so what can it be? When I try to tune into Hotbird I can see the signal strength climbing up to 60% but no signal quality except on ASTRA. I have been at this for weeks now and have only just come off the roof an hour ago after yet another failure to find Hotbird. Any suggestions? Thanks

[BGonaSTICK]

It's really tough to advise on these things when you get half-way there. The only thing I can suggest is that you read our guide to motorised systems. It should be pretty foolproof, but you really have to follow it to the letter.

When you say "52.5 longitude" I take it that you mean latitude, but what is your real longitude? Are you close to 1W? If so, you should set up your motor on this.

Everyone has little bits of advice when setting up an H-H motor, but the textbook way of doing it is here.

If you just follow these rules and ignore everything else you have ever come across, you should be OK. If not, then I would suggest that it's hardware related.

60% signal strength is very poor for 19.2E. I would expect it to be in the range 95-100%

[sat_man]

HI yet another long morning spent trying to locate satellites. Using 5 different new LNBs that I have (to see if my lack of signal was LNB related) I scanned the sky using a satellite meter. I located some satellites with up to 72% signal strenght (meter informing me that I am locked onto a satellite but still no signal quality). After a while I discovered that if, without moving the dish, I changed my LNB setting away from 'Universal' to e.g. 10,200 I got a signal quality reading of about 50%. When I changed the LNB setting back to 'UNIVERSAL' setting the signal strength remained. I tried this with several good quanlity new LNBs and the same thing happened i.e. when set to Universal (that are all universal LNBs) it did not receive signal quality readings when I moved the dish but then when I moved the receiver LNB setting again to 10200 I got signal quality readings which remained when I set the LNB setting on the receiver back to Universal, Strange but it would account for the many hours spent waggling the dish back and fore picking up signal strength but no quality.

I then used this tactic to locate Hotbird and I locked onto the clear Fashion TV. I was then receiving 56% signal strength and 57% signal quality (watchable picture but very pixillated). I then tried to fine tune the dish alignment to increase these figures, but when I slowly moved it up / down / left or right the strength / signal deteriated. These were the highest figures that I could achieve. Very disappointing. I did not bother trying to locate other satellites just concentrated on improving my signal quality on Hotbird with no success (57% max).

Originally I had similar figues from my previous Triax 90cm dish / cheap .6db lnb. I have now spent out on several low db LNBs (2 titanium / 1 MTI Blue Line / 1 Ligl .6db / 1 Amstrad .6db (all new) plus as several experts say that LNBs make little improvement I also upgraded to the Funke aluminium 1 mtr dish (which several web sites said was high gain and the best in their 1 metre dish trials). The dish cable that I use was fitted last year and is high quality solid core cable that I ordered specially for motorised satellite systems.

The only thing that I have not changed is the receiver. Could that be the problem. I am contemplating buying the Technomate 7755 to see if that would get me better signal strength just in case my Humax is faulty. I would rather not buy a new receiver as I would prefer to wait until the high def rceivers come down in price, as if I bought the Technomate 7755 I would want a few years out of it.

Do you thing that a new rceiver would make a difference to the signal strength on Hortbird. I live in the Midlands and my satellite dish points to open fields (no obstructions). It is on my garage roof. So surely I should expect better figures from Hotbird with my new set-up (Funke dish / MTI LNB / good cable). I would be grateful for your comments and your opinuion as to whether the next step is to change the receiver which costs about £130.

Thanks again

[Mickha]

Hi sat_man ,
how long is your cable run from the dish to the receiver? The 2 dishes you have mentioned should be giving you a very strong signal, as both dishes are well above what is required, for your area, for both Astra 1 and Hotbird, no matter which LNB you are using, I would have expected 80-90%.
Can you examine the cable for any sign of damage?
Also have you an old analogue receiver, this might give you a clue as to where the problem lies.
Please keep us informed with your progress.
Best wishes
Mickha

[sat_man]

Hi Mickha,

Cable run approx. 10 mtrs. I will check it over again as you suggest. Strange that I got 97% signal quality on Astra 19E last week but only 57% best on Hotbird today. Do you think that changing the receiver could help? I would rather not fork out £130 on a new receiver unless it is likely to help the signal strength situation but I found the no signal strength on Universal LNB setting of the receiver until I changed the setting to 10200 strange. My Humax 5300 is 3 years old so perhaps it is due for a change. I have some not so high standard new coax cable in my garage. I will likely try to run that direct from the receiver to that dish see if that gets better results than the high standard cable that I currently use.

My missus has threatened to leave me unless I sort it out soon as I spend so much time on my garage roof and not getting my other chores done. I even thought about calling in a satellite expert but he wanted £95 per hour and as he was coming from 1 hour away it could be an expensive call-out.

Thanks for the suggestion

[sat_man]

Even weirder. On my receiver Universal LNB frequency I was getting 54% signal strength and 57% signal quality on Hotbird, so I just went into my receiver LNB settings and changed the LNB frequency to 11475 and the signal strength dropped to 47% but the signal quality jumped to 72%. It appears to be related to my LNB frequency, but all the LNBs that I am using are Universal so the universal setting on my receiver should work. Strange

[Mickha]

Hi sat_man,
it sounds like a problem with your receiver, but before buying a new one try the other cable, and for £95 per hour you could get a Technomate 1500, or other receiver, for 1 hours help !!!!!!!
If you have got an old analogue receiver try that as there still are some PAL channels around and one is listed on Hotbird, Duna TV 10813 H.
Please keep us updated with your hard work, at least when the problem is solved you'll have had a lot of experience.
Best wishes
Mickha

[BGonaSTICK]

Ouch. I really feel for you. The whole experience must be leaving a bad taste right now.

What you're describing with the LNB settings is very interesting.

All you are actually doing by changing that setting, is shifting the overall receive frequency of the receiver.

The 'Universal' setting that you're modifying is equivalent to a local oscillator frequency of 9,750 MHz on low band and 10,600 MHz on high band.

If you're on high band and manually changing the LO to 10,200 MHz, what you're actually doing is adding 400 MHz to the frequency of the transponder you're tuned to. In other words, if you tune to 12,000 MHz, you will physically be receiving a signal at 12,400 MHz.

If everything was working normally with the receiver, then just switching to a transponder which was 400 MHz higher would have exactly the same effect. This could indicate a failing tuner module.

Temporarily change out the coax first. It could be that simple, but as you've now changed everything else, the receiver is becoming the center of attention.

If a coax change makes no difference, then in my opinion you have to try a different receiver.

Is there no way you can borrow a receiver for a few hours testing? Anything - a Sky digibox, borrow one from the shop you bought the LNBs from, a neighbour, 'rent' one from Argos for a test (16 day money-back guarantee)...

STICK

[Jimdefruit]

I have read and followed this post many times now and I think the only problem it can be is that your arc is not following the correct line.

If you are getting Astra 1 signal even thought is is not particularly strong then you should get Hotbird without any trouble if the arc is correct. It must be a case of the mounting pole being slightly off the vertical.

When you put up the new dish, did you get the true south line accurately, not the magnetic south?

I appreciate that you have been playing with the horizontal movement of the dish but unless you can set up on a satellite near to true south you will not know where you are when it comes to other satellites. Unless your location is 19.2E, forget that and find a satellite due south and start again on that.

Dont forget that with a motorised mount, as you move the dish around, you automatically adjust the lnb skew. If you move a fixed mount by hand, the skew remains fixed and the signal will suffer.

When it comes to the motor settings dont rely on the goto feature because they may be wrong. I would strongly recommend that you drive the motor one step at a time to get the best signals and save them.