Receiving Hotbird with a Zone 2 dish

[eurofan]

Are the Zone 1 and Zone 2 Sky dishes rectangular?

[Rick]

No Oval, you can see a zone1 and 2 next to each other here

My setup

the perspective in the photo makes the zone 1 look a little bigger than actually is.

[eurofan]

Drat! I was going to publish a photo of my own setup until I saw your super professional one

I'll wait a couple of weeks to let the deflated ego recover

[Rick]

Originally Posted by eurofan

Drat! I was going to publish a photo of my own setup until I saw your super professional one

I'll wait a couple of weeks to let the deflated ego recover

Go for it. It's not a competition. It's always good to see other peoples attempts.

[first attempter]

My new Raven Zone 2 dish and quad LNB arrived from the eBay supplier (excellent 24 hr delivery) and I partially installed it yesterday afternoon. I can now receive the Italian TV channels from Hotbird OK but I ran out of light to finish the job. As noted in the latest posts the dish is bigger so I decided to install it away from the existing Zone 1 dish (only to leave easy ladder access to the window above). The new location also had the advantage that I could temporarily set up a receiver/TV in the adjacent room with a temporary cable from the dish through the open window while I could look through the window at the TV while I adjusted the dish alignment. Reception seems very sensitive to relatively small changes of alignment. I've got to grips a bit more with the receiver menus and the Antenna Setup menu has Signal Strength, Quality and BER bars, and for the transponder of most interest to me 11766V, they show SS 77%, Q 70/71% and BER 27/28%. All installation activity has been rained off today but when I get back up to finalise things should I try to further tweak the alignment or are these figures OK? Regarding the LNB skew, dishpointer.com says I need 9.9 deg. The LNB (and dish) I assume being primarily designed for SKY at 28.2 deg has 5 fixed LNB skew settings. The instructions which cam with the package include a map of the UK with required LNB skew settings for different parts of the country, as they apply to Astra at 28.2. I hope I have deduced correctly that each setting covers a band of 4 deg and I assume that the setting is probably in the middle of that band. I chose setting number 4 because it looks as though that covers the band 7.5 deg to 11.5 deg so I assume setting number 4 is 9.5 deg skew. How critical is that setting to my reception of Hotbird? I'm using PF100 cable for the dish to receiver but I've been given some RG6 cable. Is that suitable for satellite TV and especially outside? As I said at the beginning I'm receiving the channels OK so I could wrap it up at that. But I will be grateful to hear from the experts if you think I could improve things further. Thanks

[eurofan]

My own experience with setting LNB skew is already documented on this forum....
To summarise, I would say that there is no hard and fast rule regarding LNB skew for various parts of the country as advised by various organisations...
My own experience with skew after reading dishpointer.com was that the suggested skew of minus12.6 from behind the dish anticlockwise, was totally wrong. Infact when I turned the skew in the opposite direction, I then got a 90% strength signal.
Therefore my advice is that you will be ok with 78% but another couple of tweaks will possibly get you more strength.
By the way, according to MY list you should in Lincolnshire also be skewing around minus12

[eurofan]

My latest work of art! also close to a bedroom window but wasn't able to use a spare TV monitor to setup
Click on pic to enlarge

By the way, what you see here is a Universal dual LNB which I changed to and the skew needed no action at all ! The previous single LNB needed +12 skew (from behind the dish ).............that's what I mean when I say that there is no hard and fast rule about skew!

[first attempter]

Thanks Eurofan for the info about skew. I'm a newcomer to this. The info from dishpointer.com for my house for Astra 28.2 shows skew -12.3 and this appears to agree with the map of the UK I mentioned which came with the dish. The info from dishpointer.com for my house for Hotbird 13 shows skew -9.9. I just assumed that the further west the satellite is, then from my location a different LNB skew is required. I'm starting to think "if its working and I can watch it OK, don't try and fix it", I could mess it all up. Thanks again for the advice.

[Rick]

To set the skew, start by having the cable vertical, unless there is a scale on the feed horn, in wich case make sure this is at the top. Then while monitoring the signal rotate the LNB in the holder slowly, it should not require much movement. It's as easy as that. It will take you alot longer to set it up by the numbers than to do it like that.

@ Eurofan, nice setup m8 very tidy. Might have been an idea to post that in a new thread in the photo gallery

[first attempter]

Thanks Rick1980. The LNB I have is not, as far as I can tell, possible to be set in the continuously variable way you describe. When I loosen the screw and rotate the LNB it moves in "notches" between the pre-fixed settings 1 to 5. I set it to number 4 when I assembled the dish, hoping not to have to alter it any further from the ladder. But I will try to move it between the pre-fixed settings to see if it gives me any improvement in signal strength relative to its present position of number 4. Thanks again