Lidl dish cable- am I doing it right?

Trevord

Having survived my visit to Lidl to get dish (there would have been less demand for Gold ingots) I am wondering about the cable enclosed.

The cable type is RG-59 coaxial cable. Looks like standard TV aerial cable.

My question is whether I can attach this cable to the F connectors as described by watty in http://homepage.eircom.net/~watty/satellite/sathowto-p8.htm

and in turn connect to LNB and Receiver

or do I need to get a different grade of cable.

Reason I ask is that P24 of Instructions talks about using LNB cable for this task and says that it is "not included in the scope of supply" (probably strange direct translation from the german).

watty

Buy decent CT100, CT125, F100 or similar satellite gable with copper braid and copper foil.

The last time I got a Lidl setup the coax was like what you might use for FM radio. Very cheap. I havn't seen this batch.

Indeed RG59 is simply the most basic 75 Ohm cable for Radio sets or Video cameras. Not even UHF TV, except for a patch cable, like between TV and VHS etc.

netwhizkid

The Lidl cable is of a poor standard (I didn't open my own length on today's latest offering yet but on the Camping Kit I also got in May the cable was pure crap, I must have used two foot just to get the F connector attached as I kept messing it up so bad was the cable. I use Copper Insulated cable I bought in Casey's Electrical shop in Killarney now, I have a long length about 40feet and use this for all my satellite experimenting.

Trevord

thanks

hargo

Would this cable supplied explain no signal or would it just give a poor signal. Reason I ask we have huge trees behind us and i am not sure whether the trees are blocking the signal or **** cableis the problem. My neighbours have same height trees and I have set the dish at a similar height and tried a thousand (nearly) positions and got no signal. Is it the direction that the lnb points to that is line of sight?

netwhizkid

hargo wrote:

Would this cable supplied explain no signal or would it just give a poor signal. Reason I ask we have huge trees behind us and i am not sure whether the trees are blocking the signal or **** cableis the problem. My neighbours have same height trees and I have set the dish at a similar height and tried a thousand (nearly) positions and got no signal. Is it the direction that the lnb points to that is line of sight?

As bad as the cable is you should still get a workable signal off 28.2° East (the same position that Sky Digital use) This is one of the easiest positions to align to over Ireland, and the best for FTA English language content, coupled with Eurobird 1, four different satellites but the same dish position does them all. Check out www.lyngsat.com for frequencies etc.

There are several other satellites you may be interested in, Hotbird @ 13° East & the Astra family @ 19° East along are the two others that are quite popular and make up "the big three" that many enthusiasts look into. I myself picked up Sirius @ 5° East, Telecom 2D & Atlantic Bird 2 @ 8° West and Hispasat @ 30° West with the Lidl Dish and Comag/Silvercrest Receiver today.

I picked up all these today using the "sat beeber" which came supplied with the Kit and the external "Sat Locator" which I purchased extra for €12, To use these first run a length of cable from the Receiver with two F-connectors on either end and connect to the Beeber make up a shorter lead say about two metres to connect the beeber to the Dish and listen in, you will hear the tone changing dramatically as you lock on to a satellite. Or if you bought the other meter, turn the knob about three quarters way round and you will hear it screeching and notice the red bars changing.

You may find that this only finds the stronger signal TV channels and if you "skew" or rotate the lnb in its holder slightly you should be able to pick up others but you may also lose some others, 6 of 1 half dozen the other, type of scenario.

As for the Trees the farther away from them you go the better, if the cable will reach, if it doesn’t you may have to look into buying either a longer cable length or a chainsaw

Try aligning it to the same position as your neighbours did or even better ask them to help you, if you are on good terms with them. Patience and an extra pair of hands are very handy while doing this. I had to clamp a vice grip onto the locking nuts as they kept turning while I was trying to keep the dish aligned and tighten the nuts, while it was raining I might add.

One last thing I feel I should mention take care while you have either the locator or beeber attached as I got one hell of a nasty shock off it today, I then went and got my multimeter to measure the voltage and got an even worse shock, for those who live on farms it was about the same as those electric fences used to keep in cattle so watch out :eek:

Zaphod

hargo wrote:

Would this cable supplied explain no signal or would it just give a poor signal.

Poorer signal for Astra1 19E or Astra2 28E or Hotbird 13E but they should still be receivable. In the long term better to get proper cable.

hargo wrote:

Is it the direction that the lnb points to that is line of sight?

No, the LOS is higher than the LNBF.


See below for more info on aligning a dish:
http://bytelive.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=How+to+align+a+satellite+dish

Trevord

I got a signal with the cable included in the kit.

Wasted a lot of time looking for signal on BBC1 - had much more joy in finding signal with skynews selected on receiver.

hargo

Thanks for the help, I managed to 19.2 but I think i'm going to need that chainsaw for anything else.
P.S loads of lidl systems in Balbriggan today