Realigning dish with 2 LNBs

Padna

I currently have a 1m fixed dish with 2 LNBs and receive digital FTA channels from Astra (19.2 E) and Hotbird (13.0 E). I am mainly interested in Spanish language channels. I was thinking of moving the dish to pick up the Hispasat channels from 30 W instead.

As I have 2 LNBs I was wondering could I also pick up channels from another satellite near Hispasat? NSS-7 (21.5 W) looks like the best bet for this. It seems to have some Italian channels. Would I be able to pick up a decent signal from both of these with a 1m dish in Dublin? Or is there any other satellite that I should consider as a "partner" for Hispasat?

Also, is it feasible to try moving the dish myself? I have no experience of doing anything like this. If it's not too hard, where could I get some guidance on how to proceed? Or how much should it cost to get someone to do the job for me? I asked in Electroplus, Beaumont, Dublin (who installed my system 6 years ago) and they estimated €130 just to move the dish to get Hispasat or €280 to move it to Hispasat + another satellite! Surely someone could do it for less than that???

Tony

Padna wrote:

Also, is it feasible to try moving the dish myself? I have no experience of doing anything like this. If it's not too hard, where could I get some guidance on how to proceed? Or how much should it cost to get someone to do the job for me? I asked in Electroplus, Beaumont, Dublin (who installed my system 6 years ago) and they estimated €130 just to move the dish to get Hispasat or €280 to move it to Hispasat + another satellite! Surely someone could do it for less than that???

you should check out the footprint map of the desired satellite on www.lyngsat.com , 130 seems a little bit steep but I dont get the jump to 280 since you alreday have the lnb and bracket?

Zaphod

In Dublin the elevation for Astra 19E is 24.8Deg and for Hispasat 30W is 25.3Deg, so if the dish was initially aligned on 19E and then simply turned west (to where Sun is about 3pm) then you should be fairly close on your target. Pretune the receiver to a strong transponder on 30W such 11.615, H, 27500, 3/4 (shared by The God Channel and various other ungodly channels), and watch the signal and quality levels on the screen as you move west. When you find 30W, you can tweak the elevation to improve signal reception. Rather than spending €130 on an installer, spend €20 on a cheap satellite signal meter and it will help a lot, plus can be reused if you want to move the dish again later on.

Not too sure about simultaneous reception of 22W, because eventhough the footprint covers Ireland, the FEC is 7/8 for those Italian channels meaning a larger dish is needed for uninterrupted reception.

Tony

Zaphod wrote:

Not too sure about simultaneous reception of 22W, because eventhough the footprint covers Ireland, the FEC is 7/8 for those Italian channels meaning a larger dish is needed for uninterrupted reception.

Not doubting you Zaphod but could you shed some light on the FEC dish size relationship, I've not had much experience with these?

Zaphod

FEC is explained here:
http://www.coolstf.com/mpeg/index.html#srfec

Dish size vs. FEC
http://www.drdish.com/eng/qa/200303/000126.shtml

If you ever point your dish at the Kiosk channels on Thor, you'll see that even with a high signal level they still tend to break up readily in poor weather because of the high FEC (7/8).


And for the original Hispasat q. I forgot to mention that you will notice that your LNB is slightly tilted clockwise when pointing at Astra. It will need to be tilted in the opposite direction (anticlockwise) when you move west, to allow for the skew of the signals from western sats.

Tony

Excellent thanks

Zaphod wrote:

FEC is explained here:
http://www.coolstf.com/mpeg/index.html#srfec

Dish size vs. FEC
http://www.drdish.com/eng/qa/200303/000126.shtml

If you ever point your dish at the Kiosk channels on Thor, you'll see that even with a high signal level they still tend to break up readily in poor weather because of the high FEC (7/8).


And for the original Hispasat q. I forgot to mention that you will notice that your LNB is slightly tilted clockwise when pointing at Astra. It will need to be tilted in the opposite direction (anticlockwise) when you move west, to allow for the skew of the signals from western sats.

weehamster

Padna wrote:

I currently have a 1m fixed dish with 2 LNBs and receive digital FTA channels from Astra (19.2 E) and Hotbird (13.0 E). I am mainly interested in Spanish language channels. I was thinking of moving the dish to pick up the Hispasat channels from 30 W instead.

As I have 2 LNBs I was wondering could I also pick up channels from another satellite near Hispasat? NSS-7 (21.5 W) looks like the best bet for this. It seems to have some Italian channels. Would I be able to pick up a decent signal from both of these with a 1m dish in Dublin? Or is there any other satellite that I should consider as a "partner" for Hispasat?

Also, is it feasible to try moving the dish myself? I have no experience of doing anything like this. If it's not too hard, where could I get some guidance on how to proceed? Or how much should it cost to get someone to do the job for me? I asked in Electroplus, Beaumont, Dublin (who installed my system 6 years ago) and they estimated €130 just to move the dish to get Hispasat or €280 to move it to Hispasat + another satellite! Surely someone could do it for less than that???

Dont bother. Stick with 19E and 13E.

Theres nothing on Hispasat 30West that is FREE apart from loads of shopping and tarrot reading channels. All of the Local channels like Tele Madrid and TVC intl are already on 19East Free. Click Here for tuning info
(There is TV Cabo which is a Portugal Digital Package, however apart from a official subscribtion, you need a UCAS cam like a Matrix Cam or Dragon cam to get them. Of course since this is not a official way of viewing the channels, a constant picture is not guarenteed)

Also the 2nd lnb would be waisted. Apart from that fact that there is nothing near 30W that really is of any interest (unless you want loads of crap Italian and Iranian TV, and I mean crap), there is also the problem that the angle between lnb 1 and lnb 2 wound have a max of between 15 and 20 degrees. So if you had lnb1 on 30w, the furthest satellite you can have with lnb2 is 15W-10W.

As for Electroplus, those price are mad, €280 to move one dish with 2 lnbs, no wonder their satellite business is doing badly. The only thing keeping them going is the fact that they, along with Armstrongs are the only trade sellers of Sky Digiboxes.

Padna

Thanks for the advice guys.

Zaphod

I came across another site with info regarding the relationship between dish size and FEC - Euro DVB 33 vs. US DSS 24

http://www.rwt.co.uk/dishsize.htm

Zaphod

These C/N values are needed to get a signal lock at these FECs:

FEC C/N

1/2 4.1dB

2/3 5.9dB

3/4 6.9dB

5/6 7.9dB

7/8 8.5dB

There will be some variation depending on how sensitive your tuner is.

The DrDish site above is no longer accessible because of a falling out between Christian Mass and the publisher of Tele-satellite magazine. But you can still access the info using the wayback web archive.
http://web.archive.org/web/20040207161025/www.drdish.com/knowledge/0303/03/

FEC vs Antenna Size

I am one of the many people that has to live with a satellite antenna ban and have erected my own hidden 45cm diameter dish to combat this. For the most part reception is very good unless the weather turns bad. Then I either get a very unstable picture or no picture at all. I’ve already tried a Sat Slope but it did not help. As I looked a little closer at the SatcoDX data, I discovered that this problem seems to occur with channels that have an FEC of 5/6 and higher and sometimes even with the more widely used 3/4. Is there a solution?
DrDish replies:

I hate to say it but the only solution would be a larger antenna. If you were able to receive signals with an FEC of 1/2 without any problems, signals with an FEC of 2/3 would require an antenna that is 1.3 times larger than the original antenna. Signals with an FEC of 3/4 means an antenna 1.4 times larger and with an FEC of 5/6 a factor of 1.5 must be considered. As you can see, the only thing that would help would be the size of the antenna. It could be either an offset dish lying on your balcony (this would actually work!), an antenna mounted in your garden that is hidden under a plastic cover or a so-called pipe antenn

Zaphod

There's an interesting article in 9th July issue of New Scientist on the new generation of error correction codes, which would, for example, allow smaller dishes to be used for a given signal strength.
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/info-tech/mg18725071.400 (sub required)

An overview of how these codes have been incorporated into the new DVB-S2 standard can be found here:
http://www.dvb.org/documents//DVB-S2%20Presentation.pdf