Help with 28.5E on Foxsat HD.. missing channels.

[28.2]

Hello,
I thought I was looking for help with dish setup, but now i'm not so sure!

I'm in the UK, Southern Scotland.

I have a dish and motor from Maplin. On the side of the house. All works fine when connected to a Comag SL25 receiver. I can get great signals from all of the main satellites and mostly viewable service from others.

In my living room, I have a Humax Foxsat HD Freesat receiver. This used to be connected to a standard ( Sky style) dish.

When I got the motor/dish, I took the original dish down. From that point onwards, I have never been able to receive Euronews (and the other services on this transponder) from 28.5E. I can receive other services from 28.5E (e.g. AlJazeera), but for some reason, everything on 12560V is showing zero "signal quality" on the Foxsat (signal strength is at about 70%-80%).

Now, here's the strange bit. When I replace the Foxsat HD with the Comag, I receive everything on 12560V from 28.5E perfectly!

At first I thought this was down to dish positioning, so I positioned the dish using the Comag. Disabled all motorised dish settings, to tell the receiver it was using a fixed dish. Did the same to the Foxsat, connected the dish to the Foxsat, expecting to see Euronews, but... nothing!

Did factory reset on Foxsat... still no Euronews.

I see the "bad or no signal" message.

Does anyone have any advice on this, or why this could be happening?

I can't understand why the Comag would see this frequency, but not the Foxsat.

[Robbo]

Check the symbol rate and FEC too (the FEC may be automatic)

[28.2]

thanks,

tried that though - just did it again to make sure.

It's not even getting the signal on the Freesat automatic setup. Scanning for the services manually makes no difference.

I've used 12560V, 27500 2/3. All the Foxsat sees is 80% signal strength, 0% Quality.

[Robbo]

A tricky one then..

loop out of the Comag into the Humax, with them both tuned to the same transponder, does it work then?

Delete the transponder and add it back it manually maybe?

[28.2]

Tried that one too.

If I loop the signal through the Comag then into the Humax, I get "a signal", not watchable, but certainly more than I get with a direct connection.

Scanning through the different frequencies, it seems that for some reason I'm not getting anything above a particular frequency from 28.5E. Everything up to 11681V is coming in fine, but above that, the signal is there, but the quality is 0%.

[PaulR]

The HDR presumanbly worked fine with the minidish? If so then it has to be down to the installation in some way.

Maybe the cable is losing some signal, maybe the new LNB is a touch fussy on its voltage or signal requirements? the Comag may be more forgiving in its requirements?

Does the cable still run through the DiSeqc motor? If so, connect directly to the LNB.

Is the minidish still up? Could you connect the new cable to it? This would narrow down your possibilities.

[Robbo]

Not getting above a certain frequency is due to either the 22kHz tone not getting through or the LNB not working properly.

CHeck your connections are good, you can do that while bypassing the motor as Paul suggests.

Strange that the Comag works though, as when using the loopthrough, it should take care of the band switching, the Humax would just be taking whatever band it was given.

[28.2]

minidish is not up any more.

Will take the motor out of the equation once the rain's off to see what happens.

I suppose the Humax has been designed with the minidish in mind so maybe the current setup isn't a workable pairing.

I have just activated the motor again, to try similar frequencies on 19.2E and they are also proving to be a problem on the Humax, and not the Comag.

thanks for your advice so far.

[PaulR]

The HDR can control a DiSeqc motor through a hidden menu but in Freesat mode it's disabled. Possibly when it's enabled it also boosts its voltages and 22KHz signal to compensate?

Definitely remove it to test!

[Tivù]

I had a mysterious problem with my own Foxsat not responding to Channels at the top end of the Band and cured it by swopping the associated LNB over with one from one of my other Dishes.

A simple, yet hard to quantify, incompatibility: The old LNB works fine where it is now.

[Tivù]

Just noticed you've got the grand total of Zero replies on Digital Spy.

It's all gone to rats since people discovered the joys of Satellites.co.uk !!

[PaulR]

Digital Spy.

Wassat????

[Huevos]

Does the Humax receiver see Astra 2 and Eurobird 1 as separate positions?

Here I have to move the dish to go between Astra 2 and Eurobird 1. If I left the dish on Astra 2 I would not be able to receive EuroNews.

Anyway reasons why you might have trouble are: you are in Scotland, the bigger dish has higher gain and hence a narrower beam. Beam is even narrower as frequency goes up (12560). Maybe the Humax has a weaker tuner. And lastly maybe alignment is out.