Am I doing it right?

[John.W]

Hi fellas,

I've got the meter connected - FAR TOO LOUD - it's making all the dogs bark - and I'm concentrating my efforts on NSS 806 40.5 W

At the moment the signal strength is 75% but the quality doesn't move off 20%, which is what it normally says with the cable disconnected, so it might as well be 0%

I can't see the TV either.

Are the final adjustments really so small before you get a good signal?
Or is it possible that my box isn't configured properly? At the moment it's set on manufacturers settings.

Any thoughts?

John

[Robbo]

By the looks of it that satellite is mainly C-band, so you won't get anything off it with your Ku band setup.

The only Ku band transponder is ponting at South America.

I thought you were going to try for 30W.

For that try setting the transponder to 11731H, it carries a couple of FTA channels- canal Latino, canal catala.

Normally I have found that if you get the elevation about right, then just slowly swing it round until you see the needle on the meter go up. Then very carefully find the peak. Then go to the receiver and find out which satellite it is, by seeing what channels appear and and what frequency, and check against Lyngsat.

Robbo

[John.W]

Hi Robbo,

Right! C-band...

Yeah I was looking for 30 W, but I thought my neighbours building might be in the way. It seems quite close. The dish was also facing along the length of the terrace, which I thought might reduce the angle too much. Terrace ceiling getting in the way....

Anyway, I'll have a go at it again. Might get lucky! I'll also try 11731H

Btw, let's see if I've got this right.
First I select Hispasat on the TV, then try to get a strong signal with the meter, I then do a search on the TV.

Is there something I'm not doing?

[Robbo]

Kind of. I don't know how your menus are on your receiver, or even if you have any channels already scanned in by default.

But, on my TM, I would go into the install menu. Select the satellite, select a transponder, and a meter appears.
I would then go outside and twiddle the dish whilst looking at the sat finder meter.

Once I found a peak, I would go inside and see if I had good quality, If good, scan the transponder and see if the channels that come up match Lyngsat for that satellite.

If the quality was bad, I would first scroll through all the transponders for that sat to make sure I was getting nothing, Then, I would go through some of the other satellites nearby, until I found one with good quality (on any transponder), and using the method in the previous paparagraph confirm what satellite the dish was getting a signal from. Once you know where the dish, with reference to the arc, you know where roughly you need to move it for the satellite you do want.

[John.W]

More or less the same with my Mvision.
I select Hispasat and the TP says 11470 03400 H
Then I can select All Channel, One TP, FTA Channels or Blind Scan.

Anyway, as I go through the list of satellites most of them show a signal strength of between 60 and 75%, including Hispasat, so I think I'll just have to persevere a bit longer.

I found out that it's a good idea not to put the compass close to the meter of the dish. It gets deflected by about 10º

Cheers Robbo!

[Robbo]

Originally Posted by John.W

Anyway, as I go through the list of satellites most of them show a signal strength of between 60 and 75%, including Hispasat, so I think I'll just have to persevere a bit longer.

I found out that it's a good idea not to put the compass close to the meter of the dish. It gets deflected by about 10º

Cheers Robbo!

It's the signal quality that counts, once you get a good quality reading on any sat, you know you are almost there.

Yes a compass will do that apparently because of the metal in the dish. I have never used one for satellite use. Once you know where south is , you can guess after that. Luckily in the UK almost all other dishes point at 28E, so that makes a good reference also.