0.8w thor sat reception

[jonmarkwright]

I am still having no luck at all getting any feedback on my sat signal finder. I must still have a setting wtong kr something. Can someone tell me if i should be using vertical or horizontal polarisation or does this not matter?

[Joe_90]

Post your approximate longitude and latitude - no need to give your precise location if you don't want to - it's only to give information on how the motor should be turning. My location on the east coast of Ireland is approximately 53 North and 6 West. So my settings in the motor setup in ViX reflect that. A value west of the Greenwich (zero) longitude is expressed as a negative in some setups, but the ViX configuration would say East or West. My motor latitude is also set to 53 degrees on the scale on the side of the motor. Some motors have elevation scales instead of latitude scales so it might be (90 - 53) = 37. This setting is important as otherwise the motor won't track the satellite arc properly. It may need tweaking afterwards. Drive the motor to zero with goto x. Ensure the whole motor and dish assembly are pointing due south. In this position the dish should look pretty vertical - the whole dish face should be pointing at the horizon. The offset nature of the dish and the way the LNB is mounted means that the LNB is looking up at the satellite about 30 degrees when due south. The scales marked on the motor and the dish are only approximate and will need to be tweaked. If you now do a goto on your receiver to 0.8 W (Thor), the dish will move either east or west depending on how far east or west you are of the Greenwich meridian. If you were in London the dish would/should barely move from zero to 1W. The scale around the motor is also only approximate. In my case, when I tune to Thor, my motor scale gives an indication of about 5 on the east side of zero - it's a relative scale.

Unless your initial setup of the motor and dish were absolutely spot-on it would be unlikely that it will be actually pointing at Thor. You will have to move the whole motor and dish slightly east or west until you get some indication on the meter (or on the signal quality scale on the screen). You will also have to adjust the dish elevation (not the motor elevation) up or down to get the signal. You will find that if you get any signal at all, the merest touch in one direction or another will cause huge changes in the signal quality readings. Don't be concerned with signal strength - go for best SNR (signal to noise ratio). Even the act of tightening the bolts on one side or another will affect the SNR, so it's a delicate balancing act. Lastly, rotate the LNB in its holder to get the initial skew correct (again, best SNR).

[jonmarkwright]

Cheers tony for the info.
I will be looking at this again tomorrow night and will give a full evaluation of the setup back to you with some photos. As im sure i may just have something funndermentally wrong.

[jonmarkwright]

Hi,

Here I am again.

Firstly I would like to say thank you for all the feedback up to now. Your advice have helped with the teething problems I am encountering.

Let me recap:
I am setting up a motorised dish setup on a 60cm dish with a technomate tm2600 motor and a vu+ solo2 box which was purchased from world of satellite with the latest enigma 2 and vix setup. It now has a technomate tn -4 0.1 lnb.
My house is a semi detached house with a south facing end wall. I have mounted the dish and motor to a pre-existing bracket which is right up at the peak of the house. The pre existing bracket is a steel bracket which holds the pole for my roof aerials. The gap in between the u clamps that fix the pole to the bracket was an ideal location for the motor bracket to be attached to.

Firstly I ensured that the pre existing pole was level and true, which I achieved with some minimal packing and adjustment. I then fixed the motor to the dish ensuring everything appear plum and true on the ground before fixing to pole on the bracket. I setup the dish declination using the motor manual and my latitude measurement. I routed a twin coax cable(which ended up being a thinner version than the standard one. Bought off ebay suitable for sky HD installations, had to use the plugs with the smaller internal bore, if that makes sense) from my receiver to my dish. One cable goes direct to the lnb with the other one going to the receiver port of the motor and then a short makeup cable that runs from the lnb to the motor’s lnb port. I manually drove the dish east and west to find my max position and then adjusted the hard stops so the dish would not foul. This happens to be 25 to the west and 50 to the east. I then manually moved the dish to 0 and reset the motor. I then tried to approximately point the dish true south by adjusting the motor mount.

I then setup the vu plus solo2 box via the wizard. Set the screen size, network connection and then tuner. I used simple configuration mode for tuner A and setup to positioner. I then put in my long and lat which is: long -2.991 and lat 53.162 for my postcode ch4 0ra. I was originally under the impression that you had to change the long to west instead of east as it was a minus minus figure but this through my motor positioning out when drove through the box on gotox instead of driving to 28.2 drove to 30 something. I changed this back to east and it then drove to the correct position as i indicated on gotox. I then setup tuner b which was simple set to second lnb of motorised dish. And completed the wizard without a tune.

I then tried driving the motor to 0.8w for thor and got up the ladder to ensure the dish had moved to the correct location. I then used android app satellite director and dish pointer to ensure the dish appeared to be point approximately in the correct direction. I then used a satellite finder (cheap style one with +/- DB gain control on a needle) to fine tune the dish. To connect this I disconnected the motor receiver connection plugged the meter in and run another cable out of the meter from the lnb port to the motor. The receiver lights up but no sign of any signal. I loosen off the motor mount and dish angle and play around in the vascinity but no sign of any signal. I have tried doing the same on 28.2 east and still no joy. The line of sight up there is free from anything and i in my mind have everything setup correctly but there is something fundamentally wrong.

Does the LNB need setting up somewhere? is there anything else I am failing to do on the receiver?

[jonmarkwright]

Tonight im going to triple check all my connection to make sure i dont have something fundermentally wrong. I also have excess cable which is lying in the atic so i will shorten the overal length of that too to minimise losses..

[Joe_90]

You were correct in your first assumption that you set your longitude to West, because you are west of the Greenwich meridian You will see in my post that I said the motor markings are 1) relative and 2) only approximate. The zero position on the motor represents your south-facing meridian. Solar noon (south) at your location is 11.59 today. The Thor satellite is located at almost 1W, which is two degrees east of your location. The SKy satellites are located over 28.2E which is thirty one degrees east of your location. This is why your motor scale said thirty-something degrees. Don't get too hung up on the motor scales - they are only approximate in any case. The important things are plumb motor pole (which you've checked) and the zero point on the motor approximately south (check around 12.00 if you can - sun is due south).

You really do need to have the correct latitude and longitude set in your receiver, though. Otherwise, nothing else will make sense. The only time you might amend your longitude to a false value would be if your dish gets blown a degree or two east or west during a storm and you don't want to get up a ladder and fix it immediately! But that's for another day...

The latitude and longitude settings are for the USALS calculator in the receiver so that it can work out the azimuth bearing from your location to the desired satellite. The motor is pretty dumb in that it only knows its zero position and where it is pointing currently. When it is told to goto X degrees by the receiver it works out how many rotations on the motor to get from where it is now to the desired azimuth bearing.

Before USALS, the motors had pre-stored satellite locations. You set the motor up on your southernmost satellite and then ran a re-calculate command to work out where all the other satellites were relative to your location. Very flexible in that you could tweak individual satellite positions and store them in the motor, but it's complicated to set up. Most motors will support this method as well as USALS.

USALS is much simpler in that you point the motor approximately south, type in your latitude and longitude into the receiver and it points the motor. Once you line up carefully on your initial satellite the rest "should" come in providing your pole is plumb etc. etc. The disadvantage with USALS is that you can't store individual satellite positions in the motor.

As you are at almost 3W, your southernmost satellite could be either Thor at 1W or the French services on Eutelsat 5W. The advantage with 5W is that the signals are very strong. The transponder 11591V on 5W is still carrying France 2/3/4 services free to air. A lot of the other transponders will be encrypted so you won't see anything on screen, but the signal bars will be available to you.

[Joe_90]

The OP has replaced the LNB. I think it's just a dish pointing error.

[TK4|2|1]

All the advice from fat-tony is sound advice, however the OP needs to clarify a few more details.
Are you saying you fixed the motor to the pole, then attach the dish? This is wrong.
1. You need to fix the dish to the motor on the ground, so you can get it inline when viewed directly from above.
2. On the side of the motor bracket is a latitude scale, have you set this to yours? 53. deg north if not do so and tighten it and don't touch it again.
3. How are you moving the dish to 1.deg west? Have you installed a channel settings list from plugins? If not do so, vhannibal motor for instance. Select a channel from 1.w and the dish will move a tiny amount east as you are west of 1w.
You can then slacken the motor u bolts on the pole and align for best signal, along with the dish elevation adjustment, BUT NOT MOTOR ELEVATION that you locked at 53.
This, along with fat-Tony's advise should get you up and running, if it don't, call an expert, at least you gave it a shot.

[Joe_90]

Just to chip in again @TK4:

1. Good advice.
2. Already advised on that. May need slight tweaking afterwards if the dish doesn't track properly, but I think I made it clear that the dish elevation bolts are the ones to adjust to peak the initial signal quality.
3. You don't need a channel settings list to do this and I think it may complicate things initially. The standard signal finder in the ViX setup menu will drive the motor/dish to the correct direction for the satellite (providing the latitude and longitude are input correctly) and will display a signal strength and signal quality bar for the transponder. I have suggested one for Eutelsat 5W (11591V) which could be used. By all means, install any channel lists afterwards once the setup is peaked for best signal quality. I found that this approach (using the signal finder) gives a good initial setup. The signal bars are displayed full screen so are easy to see, even on a mobile phone if you are using the Web-IF.

[jonmarkwright]

Hi

Again thank you for the responses.
In my haste and trying to include every point I may have missed a couple of points or confused the situation.
I did assemble the dish to the motor on the floor as working as at the height I am working at I could never accurately judge the alignment of the motor arm and the dish accurately. Plus I did read this advice elsewhere. I also set the motor angle to 53 as you suggested this was also something I did on the floor with the help of the manual.

Last night I removed 10m of cable which was excess in the loft. I also re-terminated my connections to ensure I didn’t have any faults. I adjusted the box longitude to west and drove the box initially to 28.2 via the receiver. As you correctly indicated tony this was about 31 on the motor. I tried the signal tester again at this location and again i am struggling to get any feedback on the signal tester when manipulating the dish manually, via the dish inclination and the motor mount to the pole, around that area.

I will try the next stage of using the signal finder on the box later in the week but Istill feel there is something fundamentally wrong.
One issue that I cant get an appreciation for is the marking on the dish for its inclination. I have attached a picture.
The scale is strange it shows on the dish bracket it shows 45 degree a line then 65 degrees a line then 60 with no line the bracket part that is fixed to the arm itself has a scale that runs from 20 degrees to 55.
According to my motor manual based on my latitude should be 30 degrees minus declanation angle. Declanation angle for my latitude is 7.6 and therefore the dish bracket angle is 22.4. from the scale in the picture am i right in pointing what i think is the 65 degree line at just over 42 on the sliding scale therefore as close to 22.6 as I can get?

bracket.jpg

[Joe_90]

@jon - I'm not entirely sure what the photo shows as it doesn't include the actual dish, but I would think that you are maybe subtracting 42 from 65 to get 22, perhaps?
Maybe you should align the 65 marker to 22 degrees so that the dish will be tilted down a lot more. Is your dish face, when on the motor and pole and pointed south nearly vertical as I posted in #19 above?

I'm attaching some photos of my dish pointing at 5W and at 28E. Remember I'm at 6W and my house faces exactly south, so when the motor is at zero it is facing due south. The 5W satellite is the one I align to and is just 1 degree east of me so the dish is pretty much central. Notice how the dish face is pointing at the horizon - it's not elevated or tilted upwards. The satellite is at about 29 degrees elevation, but the dish itself is an offset design (most are) so it looks "upwards". In fact the dish elevation bracket is almost at its lowest setting. If I was located further south (in Spain perhaps!) it would need to be tilted upwards. For Astra at 28E the dish and LNB are tilted over to compensate for the lower angle (about 21 degrees elevation).

There's also a shot of my signal finder screen (standard ViX service setting menu) showing the signal quality etc. on the transponder I mentioned in the previous posts. Hope this helps.

[jonmarkwright]

sorry tony, i appreciate the picture aint too clear when your not the person who took it.
The picture below may help as it shows the back of the dish.
I think this dish angle could be the fundamental problem i've been looking for as i don't think the dish scale is very self explanatory.
To alter this so that the dish drops to 22 will be a massive difference.
A friend of mine who has set up his own system has said he will pop round tonight with his sat finder meter so hopefully with this this inclination and someone on hand who knows more than me can rectify the problem. Fingers crossed.
will keep you posteddish1.jpgdish2.jpg

[Joe_90]

That photo is on the opposite side as the one earlier - correct? if so, your dish elevation is miles too high! Look at my picture - the dish is almost parallel to the mounting pole when it's pointing south. That's your problem...

[jonmarkwright]

Hi All,

Well it was an eventful night and finally I have a signal. The fundamental problem was twofold not only was my dish inclination wrong (now set with the 65 degree line pointing roughly at 20 on the dish slide scale) but the signal tester I was using did not give any reading when tuned.
My friend popped round with his signal tester a beeping style needle meter. I drove it to 28.2 and manipulated the dish until I could not improve the reception any more this came out at around 5 on the meter scale at a +db of 2 on the dial I was worried this was not enough but this reflected 85 on the snr on the receiver. We then drove the dish to 5W and I tweaked it to get the best output on the meter again it was roughly 5 on the meter scale at a +db of 2 on the dial I then tightened everything down. When driving the dish back to 28.2E the receiver measured 100snr
I have taken a photo of the snr recorded on my box for 28.2E, 5W and 0.8W. 0.8w is not great but seeing as I’m 100% on 28.2E and 87% on 0.5w I am not overly willing to adjust anymore. Any opinions?
This weekend I need to finalise the dish install i.e weather proof it by siliconing the cables in the wall and tying back the cables. I then just want to drive the dish manually to double check my hardstops after this adjustment before doing a full scan.

This might be a stupid question but what is the best way to do a full scan, is it an automatic scan?
Signal1.jpgSignal2.jpgSignal3.jpg

[Joe_90]

I'm glad you got there in the end.

I would suggest that a simple handheld meter is not the best for tweaking the dish. The TV screen with the SNR displayed is better. What version of ViX and skin are you using as on the default skin the signal finder screen is fullscreen. You can view it on your mobile by browsing to the box IP address and using the web-if to navigate to the settings. Then you can have it with you when up the ladder! Alternatively, have your assistant shout out the values when your tweaking! When I'm doing scans I just perform a whole satellite scan on individual satellite positions rather than letting it scan all the sats in a particular order. It's up to you. There are AutoBouquetsMaker (ABM) providers for several of the key sats including 19E and 23E and 42E and 5W etc.