What should i be picking up?

[imported_sharumba]

Hi people,

Living in cambridgeshire Uk, motorised 80cm dish, clarke tech 3100 plus. How many satellites should I be receiving . I'm getting Thor 3/4, Hotbird and a couple of astra's, eurobird. When the guy set it up on his technomate he seemed to be getting turksat and a lot more.

It could be me with the settings, but when i try and auto scan each satellite, majority of them aren't coming up with anything. In the groups i'm only getting about 4 satellites showing and then news, sports etc.

Any help would be appreciated, and apologies if i'm being a dunce.

Cheers

Shaun

[Josh]

OK, take this example using Lyngsat you look at the beam chart of each transponder ie. 13.e

http://www.lyngsat.com/hotbird.html

Under beam to the right for each transponder

http://www.lyngsat-maps.com/maps/hb9.html

You get the EIRP map, with dish side and LNB you have you get to know what you can get and what you can't. Also using the signal strength read out you get to know what works and what doesn't. You may also be able to centre up the dish if it's motorised if it stops short or goes past.



EIRP table:

Ku band
EIRP
(dBW) Size
(cm)
>50 50
50 50-60
49 55-65
48 60-75
47 65-85
46 75-95
45 85-105
44 95-120
43 105-135
42 120-150
41 135-170
40 150-190
39 170-215
38 190-240
37 215-270
36 240-300
35 270-335
34 300-380
33 335-425
32 380-475
31 425-535
30 475-600
<30 >535

That's all on that site so you know which transponders you won't get. If you can't get stuff that you should by size of dish and it's not coded then you may have an alignment / technical issue.

There are spot beams and stuff on the communications satellites so you can't assume that you will get the whole lot on the more esoteric satellites. Some of these wobble in orbit [inclined orbit] as well which means they drift in and out. ie. they are moving in and out of the Clarke belt. I'll let others tell you which satellites they are, the ones with not much on them or heavy comms ones.

[imported_sharumba]

Thanks for that Josh, one big learning curve lol.

The bloke that installed the dish is coming round to have a look. He did ask me to try scanning Hispasat which was the most west that i would receive, but nothing coming up.

The only Satellites I am getting are:

Thor 3/5
Hotbird Astra 1
Astra 1E3A
Astra 2/Eurobird.

Not sure whether it's me, but with his technomate receiver connected he was showing me all the satellites. Give me a PC to fix anyday, but when you're learning it's a bit frustrating!!!!

Shaun

[Siege]

Originally Posted by sharumba

Thanks for that Josh, one big learning curve lol.

The bloke that installed the dish is coming round to have a look. He did ask me to try scanning Hispasat which was the most west that i would receive, but nothing coming up.

The only Satellites I am getting are:

Thor 3/5
Hotbird Astra 1
Astra 1E3A
Astra 2/Eurobird.

Not sure whether it's me, but with his technomate receiver connected he was showing me all the satellites. Give me a PC to fix anyday, but when you're learning it's a bit frustrating!!!!

Shaun

You are only receiving satellites to the east by the looks of things,....this can only mean that your dish is not set-up correctly,...if the support pole is not 100% vertical on both sides this is the result,...check your pole again even a couple of milli-metres off vertical would mean you missing satellites,.....regards

[Josh]

Satellite engineers aren't some of the best guys at getting it right. I know my nut fell off that held the motorised arm to the dish [jack] two weeks after installations with my 1.2 metre dish swinging down on the polar mount and coming to rest on the roof, whilst my father's dish pulled the bolts out of the wall and fell down onto a power cable to the garage with a wire for added strength [just as well]. We put the dish back up ourselves, rather father did with his welding techniques for a frame to fix it on, on the back wall and my geometry and dish setting tricks that I read up on.

Plumb lines come in handy when trying to find the exact vertical, also useful for alligning an LNB at 1'w if you don't use a polarotor. Does anybody use polarotors these days to go off topic ?.

[parad0x_i]

Polarotor.. is a voltage controlled rotor inside an LNB for changing the receiving polarity from V to H & vice-versa.. Are you meaning something else Josh..?

[Josh]

No I date from the ones with the motors in and the pin, cue the true name. With this each satellite had it's own polarotor setting which could be fine tuned. I junked it when I went digital since a dutch boy told me that I didn't need to control polorotion since all the satellites were closely aligned except the French ones.

I fear I might have to google the topic, you had the pin ones, the magnetic ones, the latter I was lumbered with when the sat engineer changed my LNB and I had some strange switching box to convert from one to the other. The pin ones had the servo motor that would stick up.

Nowadays LNBs have the two sets of pins, one for vertical and one for horizonal as we know, set back from each other, possible cue for me to dig out my original LNB from 1989. No too much trouble opening the top cupboard, but I have found the second one that I had the single pin LNB and used the polarotor, with skew adjustment .

My dish is basically a C120 feed horn mount affair so I just bolt on a new LNB and I did away with the old technology which I didn't need. There are a few cables I don't use either now linked to this that dangle loose.

Cue perhaps circular polarisation. Think that's in Australia we gave up with it here via the DBS satellies.

[parad0x_i]

Ahh i see you were talking of the skew.. i thought you meant to align the sat via motor..
Yes most sats are so closely spaced it's not really necessary and skew isn't such an item any more on a motorised system

[imported_sharumba]

Found out the problem that the lnb lead was slightly loose !!!! doh. The chap came round and plugged his technomate in and receives hispasat and turksat, but with my receiver it just won't pick these two at the end of the scale up.

Obviously a bigger dish would work, but would i gain anything by changing the icecrypt lnb to a better lnb. If so what is preffered?

Learning by the hour here, any help as usual really appreciated.

Thanks

Shaun

[Josh]

F connections should always be tight and you don't use splitters, switches etc with digital since it impairs the signal, also you should have good quality lead. The variable is your db on the LNB, so whatever that is you have to compare that with anything that you are going to change it with against reviews you may find online and what people say.

Doing a google there seem to be some very low noise ICECRYPT at 0.1db, if they aren't rubbish, so if you have one of them, can't see how it could improve. So that perhaps calls into question the sensitivity of the tuner.

Cloud and rain knock down the signal levels and it is a wet day today so if you didn't do the comparison within the same time domain you may not be doing a like for like... pass control over to Paradox may be. It takes a lot of rain to knock out a 1.2 metre dish with the power of satellites these days. 80cm more critical. I wonder what the guys will say... Mine is Invacom NF 0.3db TWF-031 C120. So .3db forget the rest, but it's a twin feed.