Best dish size

DavidKay

My trusty 80cm dish died today due to a design fault which caused the arm holding the LNB to rust and fall off! replaced it with the standard Sky dish but really disappointed with the reception, 60% on both Signal strength and quality! on the Skysignal test ( can these be trusted? ) many channels are breaking up and no signal at all on the Biography Channel, is it worth getting a bigger dish again and paying a guy to come out and set it up correctly? Working from Dublin

Supercell

You replaced it yourself?, if so am very suprised you got any signal witout previous experience doing dish setups!

A 60cm should be grand without houses/trees etc in the way, if there are trees and or houses in your line of sight then a bigger dish will probably be needed.

If you don't have perfect line of sight then you probably will need to get a bigger dish and a pro installer to help you out unless you live near Annamoe and I'd do it for a cup of coffee and a biccy

DavidKay

Hi Took note of all the dish positions before taking the old dish off the bracket and got an immediate signal on start up but even using the slighest of movements with the dish and the daughter shouting results to me as she saw them on the TV never managed to get above the 60% mark no line of sight probs clear south facing sky! Made the mistake of ringing Sky tEch support, had no idea what I meant by Signal quality/strenght readings!!! gave up on that option the Sky dish seems really weak, cant imagine it will stand up well to a good Irish gale!

DavidKay

Really sorry to have to ask this as Dublin jackeen but where is Annamoe?

DavidKay

Many thanks Longfield for your help! as I live in Clontarf you might need more than a cup of coffee and bickee to make it worth your trip, do you think that a reading of 60/65% is average for our part of the country? is there a chance I have a prob with the set top box a reconditioned Panasonic supplied by Sky to replace my 5 year old Panasonic which gave up the ghost a few weeks ago?

swoofer

if u are using the sky dish and sky lnb then you wont get much better. both are crap. get a triax 80cm and any other lnb will knockm spots off of sky.

gb--

Supercell

DavidKay wrote:

Really sorry to have to ask this as Dublin jackeen but where is Annamoe?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annamoe

That needs considerable updating and correction though.

DavidKay

Many thanks for the help, it looks like in this case size really matters! and it looks like I will need the help of the ' very nice man ' to set it up correctly as opposed to my line of sight on a sat 24000 miles away and the Sky system test! Really hoping a better result!

watty

You can get 80%/90% with a Sky dish, but it is awkward to adjust. Iv'e used a extension cable an 14" TV lying on ground. It takes about 1s to 2s for Quality to update. Fine tune rotation of LNB on Quality once about 70% to 80% level is achieved.

An 80cm dish has a much better rain margin.

There is absolutly nothing wrong with the LNBs used on Sky Dishs, except that they generally can only be used on a Sky Dish. However i've used a Sky Quad with adapor removed on a 80cm dish and also a regular SKY LNB wtih tab sawed off. Also fine.

The scalar rings etc are best for a horizontally eliptical dish, and a Triax dish is usually vertically eliptical, so will not work quite as well as some others.

There is generally no advantage to 0.3dB or 0.2dB NF LNBS over 0.6dB NF LNBs

DavidKay

Hi many thanks for your advice, as a nieve but learning fast amateur can you help me with one r two points? does rotating the LNB from its obvious vertical position help, the LNB provided is a Grundig is this OK, is it worth buying a Sat finder meter, at 15 Euro can they be any good, and finally I used standard TV cable should I be replacing this with Sat cable? Many thanks again for everyones help.

Tony

DavidKay wrote:

Hi many thanks for your advice, as a nieve but learning fast amateur can you help me with one r two points? does rotating the LNB from its obvious vertical position help, the LNB provided is a Grundig is this OK, is it worth buying a Sat finder meter, at 15 Euro can they be any good, and finally I used standard TV cable should I be replacing this with Sat cable? Many thanks again for everyones help.

Replacing the cable with Ct100 should be your first move, if its a sky minidish lnb this should be set at position 2 as marked on the bottom of the plastic cover, the lnb connection point should be pointing around the 5 o' clock position as you look towards the sky

watty

Standard TV cable has THREE problems:
1) Loss is too high at higher channels
2) Interference gets in easily due to poor screen
3) The satellite signals is very strong as the LNB converts frequency and amplifies it. You are creating interference from 800MHz to 2.5GHz due to the poor screening on ordinary TV cable.

Grundig LNB is fine. (now owned by Thomson).

DavidKay

Many thanks to everyone for their help, replaced the dish with an 80cm, new Sat cable and got an immediate 90% quality and 90% strenght no probs on any channels! Thanks again for the advice

swoofer

now that is what I call a result and thanks for coming back to tell us the result, if u were to tweak that lnb.... no perhaps we wont go there.

gbcullen