Total TV reception in Ireland

Zardoz

A friend of mine is interested in watching Croatian tv ,Total TV,in Ireland,Cork to be precise.
He has a viewing card and receiver but is wondering what size dish he would require to pick Total TV on 16e up.
According to these coverage maps a 60-75cm dish should suffice for most channels
http://www.lyngsat.com/packages/total.html
http://www.lyngsat.com/packages/total16.html
I know myself that 16E is a weak satellite and I often have difficulties picking up Digitalb and weaker channels on 16E supposedly receivable on the same beam.I have a 1m motorised dish.
Does anyone here have any experience of watching Total Tv and if so what size dish would you recommend .
Many thanks

watty

The website / footprints are usually optimistic, for clear skies and typical or best Transponder power. Always better to use at least next size up.

78cm (Midlands) to 110cm dish (Extreme West).

a good 78cm or 90cm might be OK in Cork. Check though the individual transponder as all are not same power. 2/3 FEC needs less dish, 7/8 FEC needs bigger dish for same power & transponder MHz width.

Zardoz

Thanks Watty for the informative post ,I appreciate it.
Most of the transponders are vertical,low frequency (<11Ghz) and have a FEC of 3/4 or 5/6.
I think he will need at least an 80cm dish ,perhaps a 90cm dish as you said .
I can recall having issues with alot of channels on 16e ,its a very weak bird .
Better to have a dish too big than too small anyway .

snaps

I struggle sometimes with a 110cm on certain transponders, infact there is one digitalb transponder i cannot get, as far as i know the total tv transponders are ok.

Zardoz

snaps wrote: »

I struggle sometimes with a 110cm on certain transponders, infact there is one digitalb transponder i cannot get, as far as i know the total tv transponders are ok.

Yes 16e is a poor satellite,those coverage maps seem extremely optimistic ,there is no way you can pick up some of those transponders on the 75cm dish they propose.

excollier

I recently replaced a Triax TD110, which was getting patchy reception from Tring on 16e, with an Andrew ValuStar 1.2m dish. This has cured the problem completely.
The owner of the dish reported faultless reception yesterday, 15th Jan, in very heavy rain.
So a 1.2m dish really does it, in Donegal at least.

watty

The 1.2m Andrews dish is 20% to 30% more signal than a Triax TD110, but is too heavy for most Diseqc motors. Needs 36V system.

The further off centre of beam, the signal degraded much more if not a perfect clear sky. Even ice crystals near invisible will be much worse. Rain very bad.

Also to save money / power transponders are not run at the full power. They are run at minimum for the dish size that has been decided for target market.

So never install the "minimum" Always allow Dish Size GOOD margin for Rain and ageing of transponders (the signal may be less in 2 years time).