bulsat signal strength...

[chavslav]

i',m in london, 1 metre dish motorised, getting 98% on bbc world 1west, drive to bulsat 39e and only get 60%, on nova sport, is this normal... be interesting to see what other members get, with there set ups,maybe my dish too small for bulsat or a weak tp...

[dick b]

i',m in london, 1 metre dish motorised, getting 98% on bbc world 1west, drive to bulsat 39e and only get 60%, on nova sport, is this normal... be interesting to see what other members get, with there set ups,maybe my dish too small for bulsat or a weak tp...

39East is a good strong sat and with a 1mt dish in london should be fine,I"m up near the humber and getting 88% quality on tv 1000. with 1mt dish.your dish is more than big enough check the alignment.

[Manic01]

Sometimes lnb needs skewing.

[chavslav]

cheers people skewed lnb now getting 66% but a more stable picture,thanks...

[boragthung]

I'm in the midlands and my hellasat reception is always very patchy. I've got a motorised 90cm disc (Triax TD88) with a TM5400 super. I tend to get around 60% on the transponders frequencies with the 'patched' channels, but the picture breaks up a lot. The signal comes and goes so that often these channels are unreceivable. Best reception is with completely clear weather but there's still some break up.

My iniitial thoughts were that my dish wasn't quite big enough to grab enough signal, but now I'm thinking if there could be other factors interfering with the signal.

My alignment of the dish, etc is close to perfect as I have double checked this. When motor is centred, selecting Thor moves the dish around the right amount (~1 deg) West. The most I would say it moves is 1.2W to hit the strongest Thor signal, so I feel that is pretty accurate (within about 0.2 of completely perfect). So unless this small an amount of misalignment can have a bigger effect on skew as the dish moves wider I can't see this as the problem.

I live in a Victorian mid terrace so there are houses straight opposite. Is it possible that a TV aerial on the house opposite the line of sight (for 39E) could disrupt the signal (the line of sight seems to miss the chimney adjacent to the aerial).

Is it possible for telegraph wires hanging across the street to cause this signal disruption?

[chavslav]

I'm in the midlands and my hellasat reception is always very patchy. I've got a motorised 90cm disc (Triax TD88) with a TM5400 super. I tend to get around 60% on the transponders frequencies with the 'patched' channels, but the picture breaks up a lot. The signal comes and goes so that often these channels are unreceivable. Best reception is with completely clear weather but there's still some break up.

My iniitial thoughts were that my dish wasn't quite big enough to grab enough signal, but now I'm thinking if there could be other factors interfering with the signal.

My alignment of the dish, etc is close to perfect as I have double checked this. When motor is centred, selecting Thor moves the dish around the right amount (~1 deg) West. The most I would say it moves is 1.2W to hit the strongest Thor signal, so I feel that is pretty accurate (within about 0.2 of completely perfect). So unless this small an amount of misalignment can have a bigger effect on skew as the dish moves wider I can't see this as the problem.

I live in a Victorian mid terrace so there are houses straight opposite. Is it possible that a TV aerial on the house opposite the line of sight (for 39E) could disrupt the signal (the line of sight seems to miss the chimney adjacent to the aerial).

Is it possible for telegraph wires hanging across the street to cause this signal disruption?

what i found you can tweak the signal, my moving the motor, in the tm menu,i' think i stepped about 5 times west on fine" in usals, and increased by 66 t0 76%, its ok, why your on that sat, soon as you move to another sat your settings will go back to what you originally set up for on arc..

[dick b]

on the TMs if you go into the motorised settings menu and drop down to position setting>ok you can then alter your longitude E/W by 0.2 at a time to peak the signal if you then save the new setting it will not revert back.just make sure you have an active TP on line 2.

[.: JaCkPoT :.]

look here.. http://www.digital-kaos.co.uk/forums...te-dish-11239/

[boragthung]

Thanks for your responses.

I didn't use USALS to set my dish up. After making sure I was pointing true south at motor centre I lined up all Sats by using goto sat and then fine movements of the motor to achieve the strongest signal. Observing the motor moving from centre to 1W it seems about the right amount (1 deg) of movement to get there, so I think the top of the arc is pretty accurate.

Getting up the ladder and vertically pushing the dish slightly to angle up/down slightly differently lost me the signal on the sat I was testing at the time. So the elevation seems to be about right. So either the skew of the lnb is only fractionally out or other obstacles are causing interference on 39E. I've not yet tried twisting the lnb as when learning how to set it up I read that for motorised dishes it should be left straight.

If I wanted to use your USALS method I would have to reset all my positions and I don't really want the hassle of that at this time (maybe in future?).

What I really wanted to know is the likelihood that telegraph wires and TV aerial (as physical obstructions to line of sight) can cause signal breakup. Does anyone know?

I shall maybe do a bit of experimenting at the weekend but I generally get strong signals on the main sats.

[dick b]

if you are using go to sat to find sats it must be set on usals in some way but not accurately.you must in put your lat & long in to your set top box and have the same lat on the motor then send motor to 1W and move the whole dish/motor assembly L/R and the dish only to tune that sat in, 11.325H 24500 is favorite TP bbc world.just pointing the dish to what you think is due south with the motor set at zero will not be good enough.then follow jackpots fine tuning guide.on usals once you have your 1st sat all others will be found automatically.fine tuning is achieved by slight alterations of the longitude settings in the STB.as described in jackpots tut.

[iic09s]

In London too, getting >90%

My dish is 1.1m, motorised, on a roof top and obstructed by absolutely nothing. I have to admit that the signal drops off quickly even with small steps in either direction.
Cheers S

[boragthung]

Well during the week I tinkered with my set up - changing from diseqc to USALS (Thanks for the tip).

I repositioned my mounted motor very slightly more West and now get a strong signal on this sat of up to 90% .

I found though that to get the best overall signals it was best to change my Thor sat position to 0.8W rather than 1W. When my set up was at the strongest setting for Thor @1W this didn't give strongest signal on the wider sats (74% on 39E) - changing to 0.8 instead gives me a better arc (90% on 39E).

The adjustments made to repositioning the motor on the mount really are very tiny but have mad a massive difference.

Looking at all the sats I can tune now they are all pretty much peaked at my (correct) longitude of 1.5W.

Some individual (hard to receive) sats can be peaked slightly more by slight adjustments of the actual satellite position (there can be some variation in sat positions looking at kingofsat). However if I use the 'global' longitude adjuster (1.5W) this might make the odd sat stronger but weaken others slightly, so I think adjusting the actual sat position slightly for those sats that are only just tunable with my dish size is probably better.

I'm pretty pleased with the results I'm now getting. When I originally set up 18 months ago I done it manually using diseqc 1.2 (as per the instructions accompanying the gear). Over time the weather (wind, etc) must have moved something slightly as over the last few months I have often been making some positioning adjustments in the software of my box. I have made sure everything is nice and tightly screwed down this time.