Lost loads of channels on Astra 1

[Kosmische]

My partner and I have a dish pointed at Astra 1 so we can watch French and Grnan FTA channels. For some reason a large number of channels suddenly showed the dreaded 'no signal' message. At first I thought maybe someone had moved the dish - we've had guys on the roof from time to time working on the house next door - but we can still get some channels - around 50 or so. However we can't now get any of our French or German channels at all. Most of the ones we can get are Dutch or Belgian.

Anyone know what the problem could be? I've treid unplugging the box and rescanning, to no avail. We use a Manhattan Plaza FTA box, and part of the problem is that I don't know what the correct settings are, being satellite virgins. I'm assuming we'd only have a single LNB and that it should be set to 'universal' but the rest of the settings mean nothing to me. I've also tried a factory reset and various other settings again to no avail.

Help!

Al Gordon

[Analoguesat]

Can you give us two or three of the channels you still have access to - then we can confirm which satellite you are picking up

[Kosmische]

Thanks for replying so quickly. I can get TV Rijnmond,Limburg, Z1, and SMD and lots of other Dutch language channels.

My partner tells me the channel she used to watch most was France 24 - 191, I think - and that's disappeared altogether, after displaying a 'no signal' message.

[Analoguesat]

Your dish is pointing at 23.5E instead of 19E.

[satelliteman]

Dish needs to move 4° in a Westerly direction and dish elevation raised a fraction.

[Kosmische]

Thanks for the two posters. However, can anyone think why the dish might've moved? This'll be the third time we've had to get it sorted. At least once before it seems to have (been) moved. Access to the roof of our building isn't easy even for folk who're used to working on roofs, and I've no head for heights myself. I'd like to avoid having to constantly get people out and was wondering whether having a motorised dish would mean I could re-align it myself in future, if necessary? Are these things expensive?

[Robbo]

It sounds to me like the dish is not mounted very securely. Once the nuts are done up tight, its fairly difficult to knock it round.

A motorised dish is in principle no more immune to being knocked off than a fixed one. As when the motor turns the elevation of the dish changes as well.

The best solution if possible would be to fit a new dish much lower down, like on a wall. It would be more sheltered, and if it did get knocked by a ladder or something, would be fairly easy to rectify, without calling in a ladder monkey.