Don't bin your squarial - It works on digital broadcasts

[nanochickin]

As you are all aware i have been playing with the squarial for a few days without much success, until today.

While trying to get a signal from what i thought might have been Hotbird i stumbled upon a transponder in the settings menu which showed eighty per cent strength. After a bit of tweeking of the squarial the Signal quality meter started bouncing between 0 and 20%.

Not being put off by the fact that when i got this far nothing else really happened for the next hour i continued playing with the dish until i came to the conclusion that i wasn't going to get it positioned any better.

Next plan was to play with the box settings. The box was showing a frequency of 11531 / Horizontal polorization / 27500 Symbol rate. No idea about the Frequency error correction rate as my box does it automatically.

With this the signal quality was bouncing up and down like a yo-yo as expected.

I firstly changed the polorization to vertical and nothing happened. I then tried moving the frequency up and down. Nothing there either. I then changed the symbol rate to 22000 and behold a signal with 50% quality appeared, although the signal strength did drop to about 60%.

Something that i never expected happened, a stable signal. :clap:

I started to scan the transponder and some stations appeared.

Limburg Tv, M6 Boutique, Raceworld, Liberty TV, QVC Deutchland, and 2 other stations that were showing the Astra Testcard.

This confirmed that i was on one of the Astra birds at either 23.5e or 19.2e.

After checking LyngSat i worked out that i was locked onto the Astra 1 birds at 19.2e even though the squarial looked further over than it was.

What i was actually looking at was a transponder on Astra 1G broadcasting on 12552 Ghz, vertical polorization/ 22000 symbol rate.

As my receiver was showing 11.531 Ghz and the signal was broadcast at 12.552 Ghz i deducted that the squarial was telling the receiver that the signal was 1.021 Ghz lower than it actually was which i why i had so much problems getting a signal in the first place. > I did expect to see this after being told by analoguesat. I just didn't expect the shift to be so big.

Anyway i am now getting a nice stable signal from Astra 1G which will allow me to play a bit more to see what capabilities the squarial has. I will try my Analogue receiver once i have finished testing on my digital one and hopefully i may get something off that.

I'm hoping if i can get the channels i watch off Astra 1 on the squarial i can then park my 80cm dish round a bit to see on 13e and 7e rather than 19.2e and 13e as its set now.

Enjoy the pics taken in my Satellite shed.

(It doubles up as a dish mount and somewhere to stick my TV & Receiver for testing, oh an not forgetting somewhere to enjoy a nice cool can of Banks's while watching TV)

[Analoguesat]

Fantastic stuff.

I'm now encouraged to have a go with my minidish if the weather forecast is correct and its warm this weekend (although I must cut the lawn first!! Have a cans of Wolves finest for me - I love the stuff (and really miss my pints of Springfield since the brewery shut 10 years or so ago.

Im surprised at the size of the frequency shift too. I'll try and work out the maths of it later.

[BGonaSTICK]

Hey, cracking find!

Love the concept of the beer, err, I mean satellite-shed too

Can you get a snooker table in there too?

[nanochickin]

Nah no snooker table, not enough room unfortunately. I have however got the little ones pinball machine in there.

I do have a mate that has a fully functioning pub at the bottom of his garden though. It has all the beer pulls, optics, juke box and he has an account with Holdens and Bathams Breweries. I have spent many nights getting rat arsed there.

Only problem is that the canal is right next to it, so a few people have had an unexpected swim. It also doubles up as the lavvy.

[nanochickin]

I had another play today with the squarial

After getting a lock on to Astra 1 i then had to work out the new frequencies allowing for the frequency shift caused by the squarial. :?

After a quick bit of number crunching i had the new frequencies to input into the receiver. (see attatchment - MS Word file)

As expected i couldn't get anything below Transponder 82 (12.051 Ghz showing as 11.030 Ghz on receiver)
and nothing above transponder 108 (12.552 Ghz showing as 11.531 Ghz on receiver)

I could only get signals that were on vertical polarization, nothing at all on horizontal. > I'm sure i've read somewhere that if you rotate the squarial 90 degrees it will then get horizontal polarization. No idea how much truth there is in it but its worth trying.

Anyway I have now finished testing with the squarial and i am happy with the results that i have had with it. Unfortunately i am now left wondering what to do with it, I'm probably going to put it on ebay so i can buy another more useful dish with the money or its open to offers or a swap. Its still in its original box and has only been outside for 2 days since it was made.

Its been fun playing with the squarial, but unfortunately for my hobby the birth of my son is looming very quickly i doubt i'm going to have much time to play with it after he pops out so its got to go to make way for something more usefull. Hopefully he won't impact on how much time i put aside for this forum.

Thanks for looking

[BGonaSTICK]

I would imagine that the 90 degree rotation would pretty much guarantee the horizontals.

My advice is to blow the forum out for a good while when your son is born. You'll only have that time with him once.

We'll be here forever :roflmao:

[nanochickin]

If hes like my daughter was he will spend most of his time asleep, hopefully.

To be honest most of the time i spend on here is during the later part of the evening so it shouldn't impact on the time too much anyway. 8)

[jontydog]

Originally Posted by nanochickin

I do have a mate that has a fully functioning pub at the bottom of his garden though.

Thats the sort of mate i want

[Analoguesat]

Ah now look what Ive found on ebay:

_http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Philips-DMAC-Squarial-Ex-BSB-2-Days-use-from-new_W0QQitemZ330032341718QQihZ014QQcategoryZ29783Q %20QrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

That seller name looks awfully familiar!

[nanochickin]

Only went for £4.99 Pity, I thought it might fetch a little more.