no signal

[nanochickin]

There are probably three satellites you can pull in with that tiny dish, 28.2E, 19E and 13E.

I've managed to get stuff of 5w with a minidish I've also heard that you can also get 30w as well but i can't confirm that myself :?



Nano

[BGonaSTICK]

Yeah, but this is a tiny 35cm dish!

[delman]

I looked at the king of sat site and from what I understood the majority of the mainstream channels, BBC, ITV etc are on Astra 28.2 and the shops and the minority channels like Muslim channels and the rude ones, House of Fun, Playboy 1 and a few others are on Eurobird 28.5. Could I be receiving two satallites at once?

Also there are a few channels available, according to king of sat, that don't show up on my receivers channel list. If I did a rescan might I find them, or am I just as likely to lose what I have already got?

[/quote]
How cool was that!? One of the things I always begged my parents for but never quite achieved
[/quote]

I really wanted winkle pickers so the Clarkes wayfarers were a strange parental compromise!

[BGonaSTICK]

Don't be afraid of losing the channels you have. If you have reasonable reception, then a rescan will always pick them up again.

The satellites are so close together, they can be regarded as co-located i.e. 'in the same place'.

Reception differences should (logically speaking) be negligible, though depending on the power output of each channel (or more correctly 'transponder') and the arrangement of the transmission beams, there will in reality be significant variations.

That takes me onto my next point regarding missing stuff.

If you've looked at KingofSat, you'll notice that each 'orbital location' (28.2E for example) effectively defines a point in the sky occupied by one or more satellites. Although they are physically independent, they can logically be regarded as a single entity.

From one orbital location (not one satellite, although we'll often use that term to mean the same thing...) there is a specified band of traffic available i.e. a pre-determined range of frequencies over which TV, radio and data may be transmitted. This capacity is organised by splitting that range up into a series of 'transponders' - each one operating at a different frequency.

To squeeze more content into the range available, alternate polarisations are often employed - i.e. transponders operating at adjacent frequencies will alternate between horizontal and vertical polarisations. This reduces the amount of cross-transponder interference and allows their frequencies to be grouped closer together.

Finally, each transponder can carry one or more channels. You may have picked up on this from KingofSat too.

Because the transmission characteristics are set at transponder level (frequency, polarisation, SR, FEC, radiating power, beam direction etc.) if you can get one channel on a given transponder (or 'TP') then you should get them all.

If you've made it this far into this post then well done - here's your answer!

You'll probably find that either some transponders are too weak for your dish to pull in, or that the actual transponder definition is missing from the list stored (for a particular orbital location) in your receiver. You'll have to read the manual to ascertain how to both access this list and then make alterations to it. It's simple to do (just plug in the values from KoS), and then perform a rescan. You should be able to scan at both TP and orbital location levels. This should pick up everything it possibly can given the physical limitations of the dish.

Sorry it's been long-winded, but hopefully it will help other people out too in the future.

I also haven't had a good waffle for a while, so I'm satisfying a personal need too

STICK

[delman]

Thanks Stick, you should have written the manual for my receiver, it would have been far more help. There was me thinking the satellite was up there pointing one ray gun at the earth, its pretty complex stuff really. Well I did a scan and I have gone to well 700 channels from the 400 pre loaded in the receiver. Loads more scrambled stuff included. So I guess that the channels that show up, like golf tv, that when you select show no signal are sending a signal too weak for my receiver.

A particular channel I was hoping for is Record Internacional TV, it should be available from Eurobird 28.5 and FTA (but isn't there even after a rescan) on these settings:-

EuroBird 1 (28.5°E)- Sky Digital: PID:2343/2344 Portuguese SID:9535 (12524.00MHz, pol.V SR:27500 FEC:2/3 - Clear).
What does all this mean and is it possible to enter these details into the receiver manually?

Thanks for the time you've spent on me!

[linsladeboy]

Originally Posted by BGonaSTICK

I also haven't had a good waffle for a while, so I'm satisfying a personal need too

That's ok, at least it's a much better class of waffle than my missus!!!!!!!!!

[BGonaSTICK]

That transponder isn't one of the stronger ones, so I'm not surprised it's giving you problems. A larger dish may be needed, or just a little fine-tuning. EB1 is physically a little further towards the East, so the tiniest tweak might give you an edge, albeit at the slight expense of TPs on the satellites at 28.2E (though these are maybe stronger anyway).

The channel is there though, see attached. The PIDS are just identifiers for the video and audio channels. Some channels have multiple, selectable audio tracks, and this is how your receiver tells them apart.

The defining data for a transponder is the Frequency, Polarisation, Symbol Rate and FEC. You can read about these in our Glossary.

This data is required to scan a TP, though the FEC is sometimes calculated automatically. Blind scanning requires even less info, but that's a different subject.

Check our glossary too for info on the various IDs associated with a channel. These are all contained in the stream sent from the satellite, and grabbed by your receiver automatically. Some receivers allow you to alter these manually, but yours may not. You'll need to refer to that manual again.

[Gav]

Sounds like your doing pretty well. If I were you, I'd invest in a 80cm dish, they can be had pretty cheaply.

Once you have left 28.2/5 East you'll find loads of interesting stuff, for example 13East and 19East (The east means the number of degrees east from north btw.).

I had a motorised setup that could scan the skys once but mother nature killed it, I've got a bog standard triax 80cm dish up now, pointing at 13East - I'd love to go exploring again, but I have a thing for heights...

[delman]

Thanks I shall try a little tweaking eastwards to see if it works. Because I am in a flat on the seafront in Hastings a larger dish isn't possible, I need the dish to be as discrete as possible which is why I chose this setup.
The freeview signal via the buildings communal aeriel is getting less and less reliable, and I got fed up missing programmes I wanted to watch. So I bought what is essentially a caravan setup, so that the dish sits on the ledge outside my window and can be brought indoors when it isn't needed. To my (hopefully not to twisted) logic if it isn't permanently attached to the building then it doesn't contravene any rules. I had hoped that the dish would see through glass and I could have it pointing at the satellite from behind my large bay window, but it doesn't seem to be able to. I am very pleased with my setup for only £54 I got everything I needed (except the vital help from you guys) to watch satellite TV and I can even take it on holiday with me!

[BGonaSTICK]

Yes, it sounds ideal for your needs. A larger dish may have worked through the glass, but you would experience some signal loss - how much depends on the properties of the glass (thickness, content etc.)