0.8w thor sat reception

[jonmarkwright]

Hi all ,

I am setting up a motorised dish on a vu+ solo 2 receiver. After a few teething problems which i have now rectified i can now drive the dish to the given sat by gotox.

My question is this do you think it is possible to receive reception from thor 0.8w using 60cm dish.

My current setup is this:
VU+ solo 2 Receiver
Technomate tm2600 motor
60cm dish with octo lnb

The dish is mounted high on the gable end of a south facing wall.
I have aligned the dish to true south with the motor on 0.
I THEN DROVE THE MOTOR TO THOR 0.8w
i used sat finder to adjust the dish via the motor bracketary.
I then inline connected a sat signal finder to fine adjust the signal however I could not get any feedback on the signal finder no matter how much i manipulated the dish around that satellite area.

I tried to setup to thor as people suggest this is best due to the highest sat but is it possible i cannot recieve this on a 60cm dish.

I will try to drive to astra 28.2 tonight and see if i have any luck.

but any feedback welcome.

regards jon.

[DaMacFunkin]

60cm with Thor may be possible on the east coast, there will be certain exceptions, but you probably are going to need 80cm, maybe more in bad weather.

[jonmarkwright]

Sounds daft, but you did turn the adjuster on the signal finder down/connect it the right way round/make sure the box was powering the LNB didn't you?

Haha nothing is daft when it comes to me setting this up... the signal tester did power up as screen lit up. instead of disconnecting the second feed i disconnected the feeds to and from the motor and did have them in the correct i did adjust the signal finder gain.

[jonmarkwright]

I tried adjusting the signal using the astra sat at 28.2 but still no joy. I used the sat pointer app to adjust to the general direction and then tried the signal finder inline between the reciever and lnb. The signal finder lit up but i could not for the life of me get any feedback on the needle with any adjustment of the dish or signal finder.
Could the lnb not be working? It was a second hand lnb from a friend.
Is it normal that if you are possibly not in the correct direction to a sat that when you try to tune on the box it hangs on 0 percent complete then after a while with still no change saying 0 percent complete suddenly changes to complete and no service found.

[DaMacFunkin]

The problem you are having is setting up a motorised witha small dish, as you say it is normal to lock onto 0.8w and then the rest of the arc should in theory be alright.
But you havn't specified the equipment you are using.
Is it a 60 cm sky dish or a normal shaped 60cm dish?
Is it a sky octo lnb or normal octo lnb.
Trying to motorise a sky 60cm dish is possible, i have seen it done, but not with a sky lnb, you would need something to alter the skew on a satellite by satellite basis.

[aido]

I thought the motor took care of the skew by moving the dish accordingly?

I get most satellites between 30w and 30e using a motorised Sky zone 2 dish with Sky quad LNB up in the Ilkley area so West Yorkshire and then put the same setup in at the stepfathers house in Derbyshire which works great.

I did have issues at first with some channels until I loosened the LNB and just twisted it anticlockwise past where it was supposed to go at it's lowest setting and then that seemed to sort the channels I was having issues with.

With the dish using the standard Sky skew it was too far out when the dish was rotated as well (double skew I guess)?

It was Cartoon Network which gave me the most grief after it was installed - once I sorted that out on 28.2e channels on the other sats I was having problems with started working too. I would like a bigger dish for feeds but the mrs wouldn't be happy with it as we've already had comments due to the size of the bracketing used!

[jonmarkwright]

Thank you for the replies.

Its is a non sky dish and a non sky LNB. The the dish is a simple round 60cm Dish. It was a setup that a friend once had at his old house before opting for a new sky install.
As i am not getting any sign of reception even at the sky satellite i have convinced myself its the LNB now.
Can anyone advise an LNB brand or a standard LNB that is recommended. it does not need to be octo a quad is more than sufficient.
I have seen a sky style ones on amazon prime for around £15 with good reviews but not sure..

[Joe_90]

I would also recommend that you don't use a SKY LNB on a standard offset dish. Buy a standard 40mm collar non-sky LNB. You don't need an expensive ultra low-noise version as your dish just won't pull in the weaker signals. I'm surprised that you are not getting any reception when you are setting up on 0.8W as a 60cm dish is much more forgiving of pointing errors than bigger dishes (eg > 1metre). It certainly points to a problem with the existing LNB or the connection, assuming that you are able to move the dish left and right using the motor bolts and up and down using the elevation bolts on the dish. I assume the motor is set to the correct elevation (50 something degrees depending on your latitude)? Leaving the satellite beeper out of the equation for the moment, have you tried using the signal finder menu on ViX and selecting a transponder on 0.8W? You will need an assistant to call out signal quality levels while you adjust the dish or you could use a mobile phone with wifi enabled to browse the built-in web server on the box. Careful up that ladder, though!

[DaMacFunkin]

I thought the motor took care of the skew by moving the dish accordingly?

I get most satellites between 30w and 30e using a motorised Sky zone 2 dish with Sky quad LNB up in the Ilkley area so West Yorkshire and then put the same setup in at the stepfathers house in Derbyshire which works great.

I did have issues at first with some channels until I loosened the LNB and just twisted it anticlockwise past where it was supposed to go at it's lowest setting and then that seemed to sort the channels I was having issues with.

With the dish using the standard Sky skew it was too far out when the dish was rotated as well (double skew I guess)?

It was Cartoon Network which gave me the most grief after it was installed - once I sorted that out on 28.2e channels on the other sats I was having problems with started working too. I would like a bigger dish for feeds but the mrs wouldn't be happy with it as we've already had comments due to the size of the bracketing used!

Which sort of confirms what i said, a sky shaped lnb on a sky dish isn't suitable for motorised, you have had to manually skew the lnb to a non standard position so it can follow the arc.

[Joe_90]

A normal (fixed) sky dish installation would have the long axis on the dish horizontal and the LNB skewed to about 7 o'clock to cater for the fact that the sat is located south east of UK/Ireland. I suppose if you used a sky dish with a motor you would do the initial setup with the dish pointing due south and the LNB at 6 o'clock. When rotated by the motor and pointed to 28.2 the whole dish and LNB would end up at the 7 o'clock position. But a sky dish is far from ideal for motorised. So you're both right

[kegnkiwi]

I've set up a a small sky eliptical dish on a motor ages go and got load of sats on it, it was gound mounted but I cannot rememer getting thor. I have set up a small camping 30cm dish and got thor though. But it signal was that close that by simply waving a hand in front of the dish and the signal cut out. This up in west yorkshire.

[jonmarkwright]

Interesting thank you for all the comments. Im thinking it was the lnb as i have replaced with a technomate one and now when i go to the tune menu it goes up in percentages where as before it didnt. I didnt have it pointing correctly and therefore no channels. I just wanted to check my theory that if the percentage bar didnt attempt to increase it was an lnb issue.
I now have a different problem. I decided to drive the dish via gotox to 0.8w when went up the ladder the motor pointer is at 3 ish degrees east. I mamually drove the motor to 0 and reset it. So i drove the motor to 0.8w again via gotox and again it went to 3 degrees east. So did goto0 option and it went to 0 on the motor pointer. Scratching my head at this point inthought i would drive to 28.2 via gotox and then it went to just over 30 degrees on the pointer. Please help im tearing my hair out with this and i aint got much left to tear out...

[jonmarkwright]

Interesting thank you for all the comments. Im thinking it was the lnb as i have replaced with a technomate one and now when i go to the tune menu it goes up in percentages where as before it didnt. I didnt have it pointing correctly and therefore no channels. I just wanted to check my theory that if the percentage bar didnt attempt to increase it was an lnb issue.
I now have a different problem. I decided to drive the dish via gotox to 0.8w when went up the ladder the motor pointer is at 3 ish degrees east. I mamually drove the motor to 0 and reset it. So i drove the motor to 0.8w again via gotox and again it went to 3 degrees east. So did goto0 option and it went to 0 on the motor pointer. Scratching my head at this point inthought i would drive to 28.2 via gotox and then it went to just over 30 degrees on the pointer. Please help im tearing my hair out with this and i aint got much left to tear out...

[DaMacFunkin]

Have you set your longitude and latitude settings correctly in positioner?

[jonmarkwright]

You are correct. Thank you.
However i thought that because my longitude was monus i had to make it a plus number by changing from east to west?