Hotbird Signal Quality problem help needed

[stewieb]

Hi All

Not sure if anyone can help me I need to improve the signal quality? I have managed to get the signal strength up to 99% on all frequencies, but still having problems with the quality. I did manage to find 3 channels on one of the frequencies, but that's it and my understanding is that there is 300 or more channels available. So I am some way short.

Thanks in advance for any help,

NB I live in Hockley Essex if thats any help and have a 80cm disk Liberty and receiver Liberty 9800

Stew.

[Mickha]

Hi stewieb,
can you please post details of the channels you are currently receiving, as it sounds like you haven't got your dish correctly aligned, and a list of the channels and frequencies will help us to locate the problem. Given your location and dish size you should have no problem getting all the channels on Hotbird 13E.
Best wishes
Mickha

[BGonaSTICK]

Hi Stew, welcome to the forum

Signal quality is a tricky one to optimise sometimes. So many things can knock it.

The fact that your signal strength is so good tends to indicate that your alignment is OK, but this can often be misleading.

When aligning the dish, you should always be trying to maximise the quality rather than the strength.

Secondly, the precise position and orientation of the LNB is critical. Assuming that your dish face is true (if it's not, you're really going to struggle), then you should ensure that the LNB arm is true and locked into position correctly. Poor assembly can cause the arm to be incorrectly located with respect the the focal point of the dish.

Once you are happy with the LNB arm, you should set the 'skew' on your LNB. That means how 'twisted' it is in relation to the logical axis of the dish. The skew will depend entirely on the satellite's orbital position in relation to your geographical location. Hotbird from Essex would probably require about 6 degrees clockwise rotation when viewed from the front of the dish for example.

Staying with the LNB, you can also normally adjust the backwards and forwards position of the LNB in the LNB clamp. Start in the middle, and try adjusting it first forwards and then backwards until you maximise the quality as seen on the receiver.

Other things that can affect quality are dampness, damage caused by heat (sun, etc), old age, physical damage and partial obstruction from the incoming signal. Even bird cr@p or spiders nests can cause problems apparently!

Poor connections could also cause a quality issue I suppose, along with possible interference from a local source. This would be unlikely to cause problems on all frequencies though unless it was a very indiscriminate wide-band interference.

Basically, if you're happy with the dish and arm, and you can't find any other external cause for the problem, swapping the LNB is usually a good course of action based on how much they cost these days.

Hope that gives you some ideas.

STICK

[stewieb]

I'll give your suggestion a try over the weekend, for your information I no not know the frequencies as I'm currently at work but one of the channels received is KTO if that of any help!

[Mickha]

Hi stewieb,
just checked on kingofsat and KTO, a religious channel, broadcasts on both Hotbird 13E and Astra 19E.
The frequencies are:
12597 V 27500 Hotbird
11538 V 22000 Astra
Finding out which one you have will tell you which satellite you are on.
Best wishes
Mickha

[Analoguesat]

You almost certainly have the dish aligned onto 19E instead of 13E

[stewieb]

Thanks for all the help, I now seem to have it sorted, apart from one frequency that I can not pickup which has nil quality & 99% strength signal frequency 11.449, all the rest apart from the frequency with art sport package on which has 80% quality and 99% strength have 99% quality and 99% strength.

Any ideas guy why this is?

[BGonaSTICK]

OK, I assume from the above that you are indeed on Hotbird.

11449/horizontal on Hotbird only carries one channel. It's a high-definition DVB-S2 channel (encoded in Conax), so your receiver will not translate it correctly, and hence the zero quality figure.

Hope that solves it for you

[stewieb]

Thanks very much for all your help,

Stew