Advice Needed Astra 2E

[jleal]

Hi,

Back in february, after loosing all english channels in my 1.8PF dish in the portuguese silver coast, and after reading and hearing all the reports from the area, I was conviced, as others were, that I was in a null area.

A few days ago, looking at my dish I noticed it was too dirty so I decided it was time for a thoroughly clean.
I started by the invacom 0,3dB LNB and feed. When cleaning the feed and after looking on the inside of the lnb, I found a big spyder nest. I removed the lnb from the dish and carefully vacuum cleaned it removing the nest, and the spyder also.

I mounted the lnb again and before cleaning the dish I thought I'll give it a shot again at astra 2E/F. To my amazement,there was a smal signal displaying on my receiver!!! I sat down for a few minutes looking at the signal bar and even took some pictures of it with my cell phone!

I fine tuned the dish and lnb the best I could and presto, channel 4, 4+1, more4, more4+1, E4, E4+1 were giving a steady image almost with no pixelization. As the day progressed, at around 20:00 to 21:00, I was also receiving ITV1, 2, and 4 but with some pixelization. The 4 family of channels was perfect at this time but with very little margin.
The bbcs were not watchable but some times it improved a bit giving sound and less pixelization although I was never able to see a full perfect image.

Later in the evening all channels were gone with zero signal.

Today, was much worse. Only 10729V showed but very briefly and with strong pixelization. The others were zero. Up until now I received no signal on the HD transponders.

I believe that I reached the limit in terms of fine tunning my motorised 1.8PF dish and the invacom lnb.

Apart from upgrading to a bigger dish, do any of you have any suggestion to try to increase a little bit the signal I receive?

The weather has been fine here, no clouds, hot sun and almost no wind, except today that it was a little foggy.
What should I expect in terms of signal evolution the next days/months?

I know someone also in my area that receives some channels also in the same terms that I do and his dish is bigger than mine, maybe 2m to 2.2m tops but again sometimes all channels are gone too.

If I was able to upgrade to a bigger dish, what would be the absolute minimum required for 24h viewing?
The best transponders at the best time of the day show SNR 39 to 41% in my dreambox, others around 34 to 36%.

 

[Analoguesat]

There a 4m dish not too far from you that gets absolutely zip on the 2E channels. As you have a few tp's but intermittent you will need to go up quite a few dish sizes to get 24hr reception. Its all guesswork though as the signal strength varies immensely over a few km according to the tests done by our Spanish friends earlier in the year.

Basically forget it - unless you can afford a VERY big dish indeed. Of course you could go down the 27.5W route, but theres no guarantee how long that avenue will stay open.

 

[jleal]

Analoguesat thanks for answering. The 4 meter dish you are refering to, I believe was in the Algarve. I'm 250 to 300km north of the algarve and a bit less than 100km north of lisbon. What surprised me was the fact that this was considered a null zone but apparently it is not although on would need a huge dish to proper see any english tv.

I've swaped the invacom to an inverto white I had lying around and got an increase in signal reception on the bbc's and also there is now a small signal on the channel five transponder. The e4 and the rest of the four team lost a bit with the inverto white. Reverting back to the invacom makes the bbc's and five almost disappear but brings back the others.

Nevertheless it seems very difficult with my setup to have a stable watchable picture for some time. There is almost always some or a lot of pixelisation on all the channels except for a small part of the day when the channel four group shines almost pixelization free. This is aslo dependent on the weather off course. Yesterday there was a bit of a haze in the air and that was enough to completly wipe out all signals for the most part of the day.

I'm no expert but I believe an upgrade from my 1.8m to a 2.4 could bring these channels with no pixalization altough I believe that with no margin for clouds not to mention any rain and not 24h/7. Maybe a minimum of 3meters would bring 24/7. What do you think?

 

[Analoguesat]

Ah you are further north than I had thought - thats good.

As for reception there, your guesses are as good as mine. With the new satellites there are no guarantees.

At the end of the day are you willing to spend €1000's with no real guarantee of success? A 2.4m or bigger dish will improve things, theres no doubt of that but a dish that big needs to be set up by someone who knows what they are doing with big dishes. Would you achieve 24/7 pixellation free reception with a 2.4m dish? Theres only one way to find out and thats to try it. You may find that the good reception period is extended but you still get dropouts for a few hours at certain times of the day.

 

[jleal]

Hi again. I'm not going to buy any dish at all. In fact I don't watch much tv so this is just a hobby, just for fun. I have portuguese pay tv and that's enough for me, although I liked some english shows and especially the picture quality, much better than the portuguese channels.
I have a friend who is going to dispose a 2.4 prime focus so I'm trying to arrange some way to pick it up, although I don't think my wife will be very happy with that...

I made a mistake in the last post, I can't receive channel 5 at all, it was a bbc transponder.

If I can get my hands at that 2.4m dish I'll find a way to set it up, not permanently, just to see if it is enough for this area.

I forgot to tell in the first post that cleaning the dish didn't make any diference in terms of signal strength. Today I noticed that I scratched it a bit with the scotch brit green hard sponge. Do you think that this scratches can influence negativelly my reception?

 

[Analoguesat]

A minor scratch wont make any noticeable difference.

Good luck in acquiring that 2.4m dish & let us know how you get on

Investigate the 27.5W option - theres plenty of info about it here on the forum ;)

 

[jleal]

Last sunday I was able to get a tv set and receiver next to my satellite dish in order to fine tun it more easily. Things improved just a bit and now I have the same channels with more pixellation free time even with some minor rain and cloudy sky. BBC one, two and four are now much better especially at evenings although at around 22:30 evrey single channel just disappears until the next morning.

I've installed the inverto white o.3 and I noticed that it has a transparent plastic film covering it in front of the hole. Can I remove this? would I get a better signal by doing so or it is intended to be left there?

 

[Captain Jack]

I would remove it. In my experience, the sticky backing tends to melt with the heat and reduce signal.

 

[Menorca Man]

Good luck with setting up the 2.4 mtr dish, that assuming you manage to get hold of it. Be aware that the bigger the dish the narrower its focus, so correct alignment in az, el and skew could be tricky without a decent sat meter.

I don't know much about PF dishes but from what I've read on this forum, you will most likely need to fit a different matching feedhorn to your LNB - one that illuminates the whole of the increased area of the 2.4 mtr dish.

As for removing that transparent film over the mouth of your current feedhorn, my advice is Don't!! You could end up with dead moths and suchlike in the LNB and that really would b..ger up the signal!! If it's damaged then you can replace it with a short plug of polystyrene foam.

 

[jleal]

Hi all. Yesterday I went to see the big satellite dish my friend wants to get rid of. That thing is huge, I've never been close to a dish that size. It is not exactly 2.4m, it's a few centimeters more than 2.3m and it has an addicional rim that gives it 2.4m dimension, but the reflector area is definitely 2.3m.

One thing that I noticed was that the lnb holder arms were not straight. The dish has three. Two are the same size and linear but the third one is curved and bigger than the other two. The dish is prime focus no doubt about it, and my friend tells me that the curved lnb arm was like that from day one of purchase, a lot of years ago.

Unfortunately I did not take any pictures but I'm trying to get someone to transport the dish to my house soon so I hope to post some in a few, not many, days.

My reception with the 1.8m PF is the same, no improvements at all. Clouds and a little rain doesn't seem to affect reception much. Hopefully the 2.3 dish will improve at least the pixellation that some channels experience.

 

[timo_w2s]

Hi all. Yesterday I went to see the big satellite dish my friend wants to get rid of. That thing is huge, I've never been close to a dish that size. It is not exactly 2.4m, it's a few centimeters more than 2.3m and it has an addicional rim that gives it 2.4m dimension, but the reflector area is definitely 2.3m.

One thing that I noticed was that the lnb holder arms were not straight. The dish has three. Two are the same size and linear but the third one is curved and bigger than the other two. The dish is prime focus no doubt about it, and my friend tells me that the curved lnb arm was like that from day one of purchase, a lot of years ago.

Unfortunately I did not take any pictures but I'm trying to get someone to transport the dish to my house soon so I hope to post some in a few, not many, days.

My reception with the 1.8m PF is the same, no improvements at all. Clouds and a little rain doesn't seem to affect reception much. Hopefully the 2.3 dish will improve at least the pixellation that some channels experience.

Interesting, looking forward to some pictures when you do get it. It would certainly be worth experimenting with the LNB position to see if it works better without the wonky arm, perhaps using bamboo and duct tape or something similar cut to size as a temporary replacement support arm.

 

[jleal]

Hi all. Finally it's here. I was able to get the dish delivered today. Sorry for picture quality but it was taken with my cell phone with little light.
The previous owner told me the lnb arm was naturally "bent". He bought it like that and always worked well.
Does anybody knows this dishes with a bent arm like this? The dish is prime focus.

 

[Pedro0102]

I think this dish is probably a Famaval 2.3m.
You can buy new arms for it.
Pm me if you need an indication where to buy them.
There is a store near buy with them on sale for around 18€.
If you can confirm it is a 2.3 m Famaval you can also buy the petals to extend the antenna to 3.1m.
Check the antenna rim. If there are some holes all around this is for sure a Famaval.

 

[jleal]

Yes there are some holes on the rim but there are only 4 sets of 2 holes. Each set of 2 holes is evenly spaced, but from the pictures I've seen, famaval dishes have more holes on the rim, I think 8 sets of 2 holes. Can you confirm this?
This dish was bought originally around 20 years ago. Maybe it is an earlier famaval version of the dishes on sale now.
If possible it would be great to extend the dish to 3.1m.

The LNB arm you've seen on sale is bent like this one? This one bolts fine on the dish surface. I think I have no holes on the dish surface to fit a "regular" not bent lnb arm.

I will post more pictures as soon as possible.

 

[timo_w2s]

It would be good to see the "bent" LNB holder in position. It all looks very weird to me.

 

[Pedro0102]

Yes there are some holes on the rim but there are only 4 sets of 2 holes. Each set of 2 holes is evenly spaced, but from the pictures I've seen, famaval dishes have more holes on the rim, I think 8 sets of 2 holes. Can you confirm this?
This dish was bought originally around 20 years ago. Maybe it is an earlier famaval version of the dishes on sale now.
If possible it would be great to extend the dish to 3.1m.

The LNB arm you've seen on sale is bent like this one? This one bolts fine on the dish surface. I think I have no holes on the dish surface to fit a "regular" not bent lnb arm.

I will post more pictures as soon as possible.

I don't have easy access to my antenna so I can't confirm. I Think mine has 6 petals each with 4 screws to the dish.

The arms I mentioned to be on sale are a normal tripod.
Check at Electrovisao.com

I suppose that those that you have will work fine if they can hold the lnb facing the centre of the dish at the focal point.
I would recommend measuring the antenna and calculating the focal point distance. This way you will be sure.

 

[jleal]

I took some pictures today. What you see is what came with the dish, except the bucket off course!!

How can I mount this polar mount? By looking at the pictures do you think that some parts of the polar mount are missing?
The previous owner told me it is complete but I'm not really sure about that.

One last thing.. There are only 3 x 2holles at the rim, evenly spaced.

 

[timo_w2s]

It is an odd LNB holder, not one I've ever seen before but I can see how it works now. As long as the LNB is looking right at the centre of the dish and is at the right focal length for the dish then it should be fine.

 

[jleal]

I couldn't wait any longer so today I managed to get the dish temporarily on a wood tripod that I had lying around to see if I could get something out of 2E/F.

I spent the most part of the day trying and trying and trying but all I could get was 2A and eurobird. I didn't notice what I was doing wrong until I grabbed a piece of metal sheet, placed it in front of the lower half of the dish to know that it didn't make any difference at all. If I placed the same piece of metal sheet in front of the upper half, there was a significant drop in signal level. In the lower half there was almost none. The problem was a tall wall that blocked some of the signal.
Over the years I've used this exact place (see photo) to try and play with my dishes. I have never had a problem until today. Being 2.3m in diameter, this dish requires much more clearance than my other dishes.

After moving all my satellite paraphernalia to another location it didn't took to long to get the first glimpse of Astra 2E. To make a long story short, I was able to get all fta channels pixellation free on 2E except HD's. ITV3 and BBC3, which were the worst off them all, were the most benefited from the increase in dish size. They were perfect, no pixellation when in my 1.8PF at the same time I had 0% signal on bbc3 and almost no image on ITV3.

Another goodie was the appearance from channel 5, 5USA, etc., from Astra 2F. I could get this channels pixel free but with absolutely no margin, although after fiddling with the lnb to try to increase signal level on other channels I messed with channel's five signal not being able to get it again pixellation free.

I was able to check the same channels on the same receiver with the 1.8PF and with the 2.3m. I used my living room tv so I didn't record dB's, SNR, etc., because my wife wanted me to hurry. Next time I take notes of that. The difference between the two dishes was huge.
On the 1.8m only 10714H was pixellation free. The BBC's had a moderate amount of breakup, ITV's had heavy pixellation and bbc3 and ITV3 were impossible to see like I wrote above. With the 2.3m all this channels were perfect, with absolutely no breakup or pixellation.

I tried all HD frequencies from 2E and 2F but I got absolutely 0% signal. Why are these transponders so weak? Wouldn't be expected to get HD channels from 2E if I get channel 5 from 2F? Are HD frequencies from 2E even weaker than SD frequencies from 2F or is my receiver to blame (dream clone 800HD)?

When I have the time and the weather permits, I'll set up this beast again with my inverto white and the feed that is on use on my 1.8PF. I also want to see if the signal stays up after it vanishes on my 1.8PF. Then I need to find a way and a place to mount the dish permanently.

The photo shows the first location in which I spent most of the day!

 

[timo_w2s]

Nice result considering your setup isn't exactly ideal for fine tuning! Looking at your photo really shows the size of that dish when compared to the doors. It looks huge.

As for the HD channels, they are using tuning parameters that require a stronger signal to decode. If you are close to the edge of reception your receiver or meter might not be able to get a lock on it.