Fta Allignment

muincav

Hi all satheads-
could Watty or someone maybe give me a bit of advice if poss...
I set up a Lidl sat for a friend the other day and used the sat finder bought in Lidl.The problem is that the strongest signal I can get is on the BBC/SKY NEWS channels is 71% sinal and 62% quality, this drops down to 62% signal 49% quality on weaker channels.Is it possible that I am not on the right satelite or just not alligned properly. Was trying for hours and even tried adjusting the LNB the way it was mentioned on this site before, but to no avail...any advice would be welcome as it is for some kids who are quite needy and would be a bonus if it was working better for Christmas.....
Thanks in advance,

byte

What other channels aer there? If you're getting BBC1, ITV, etc, you're on the right satellite (Astra2/Eurobird)

What kind of cable is being used? And how long is the cable run, roughly? Poor cable can cause detrimental affects to signal quality.

Does the channels work, or do they break up? Or are you not receiving many?

Would there be anything in front of the dish that may cause obstruction to signal, eg a tree or building?

watty

If it's BBC World TV and Sky News and a lot of foriegn stations you are on wrong satellite.

muincav

Thanks Watty and Byte for your help...
I am on the right sat but the cable seems to be of bad quality, so I am just gonna run new cable...

Happy Christmas to you both..:rolleyes:

JHMEG

At my local electrical wholesaler (MEW in Leixlip), a 100metre roll of sat grade cable is 24 euro incl VAT. Well worth the money!

stanley1

sounds cheap are you sure it's CT100?

Trevord

muincav wrote:

Hi all satheads-
could Watty or someone maybe give me a bit of advice if poss...
I set up a Lidl sat for a friend the other day and used the sat finder bought in Lidl.The problem is that the strongest signal I can get is on the BBC/SKY NEWS channels is 71% sinal and 62% quality, this drops down to 62% signal 49% quality on weaker channels.Is it possible that I am not on the right satelite or just not alligned properly.

You should get over 70 % for sig and qual if nothing is in the way (even if using the white rg59 cable that comes with the kit) have you remembered to twist bottom of lnb (to the left when facing front of dish).

Its hard to know if you are a bit off target or if your line of sight is a bit restricted. Are their channels which you should have but can't receive at all? eg. euronews, true movies, cnn, (62% and 49% puts you on the margins of pixelation)

Zaphod

muincav wrote:

The problem is that the strongest signal I can get is on the BBC/SKY NEWS channels is 71% sinal and 62% quality, this drops down to 62% signal 49% quality on weaker channels.Is it possible that I am not on the right satelite or just not alligned properly. Was trying for hours and even tried adjusting the LNB the way it was mentioned on this site before, but to no avail

There is no guarantee that if one channel is at 70% quality then all other channels should also be 70%.

Firstly, there are a number of different satellites co-located at 28E. Each of these have different footprints and power output over Ireland. Astra 2D (e.g. BBC) has the highest output over Ireland. Eurobird 1 (e.g. Movies4Men) has a much weaker signal over us.

Even on the same satellite, with the same footprint, the transponders can be at different power levels. There are several other factors:
http://bytelive.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=How+large+a+dish+do+I+need%3F


The best approach would be to align your dish to the weaker channels. A Lidl type meter is no use for this though - its reading is based on the strongest channel. So you have to use the quality level on the receiver instead. Alt. borrow a more expensive digital meter or spectrum analyzer.

watty

Sky Digibox Gotcha & solution:

The Sky Signal/quality is only the default Transponder, not the current channel. If you go to Services 4 0 1 select (hidden install menu) you can use manual tuning and it shows Signal/quality and keeps it up longer if you put the parmaeters as you do for ordinary Add Channels.

All non-Sky receivers normally show signal and quality for the current channel. Unless really badly aligned or someting broken, LEVEL is irrelevent. Only QUALITY is important, The amout you need depends to an extent on FEC. for 1/2 you need only about 30%, for FEC 7/8 nearer 80% is needed, only a rough guide as there are other factors.

Trevord

Zaphod wrote:

A Lidl type meter is no use for this though - its reading is based on the strongest channel. So you have to use the quality level on the receiver instead. Alt. borrow a more expensive digital meter or spectrum analyzer.

I agree that the little black lidl sat finder is less useful in this scenario. However, as per watty's post, the inbuilt meter in the comag receiver (which is what the op has) is channel specific and may provide a cheap solution to the op's problem.

Two man (person) job really, tweaking dish/lnb and shuttling back and forth to check readings can be very, very tedious.

Tip: Euronews is on two channels at 28E, (one is marked euronews, the other is marked euronews international) If you can make alternations to get a decent reading on both, then problem may be resolved. Not sure why... maybe one is coming from Eurobird and the other is Astra.