Newbie question and Maplin HD kit advice

[nickH]

Firstly if you bought a Maplin HD kit then this thread means you ! Skew problem with Fortecstar LNB I did not realise skew could be so important as the Sky dish I removed was set to zero skew.
You will also find that the supplied wall mounts are far too small for the job and you will need M8 shields anchors (they supplied M4).
Also I did not realise that there are different types of F connector. The different types fit different types of coax cable as some have thicker core shielding (and maybe different diameters). And they only supplied 2 when you need 4 with the motor.

My Questions
Following on from the whole day I spent wondering why I only got some channels before I found the above thread I have a couple of technical questions. How can it be that I got some channels but not others? Surely if I am pointing at the satellite correctly I should either be able to get all of them or none of them - explain please.
Secondly I am still unsure about the Astra satellites, 2A and 2D, in particular. Are these physically different satellites that are so close you can pick them all up as one? If so are there other groups like this.

 

[Analoguesat]

There are 5 co-located satellites grouped so closely together that effectively they are all in the same place to any hobby sized dishes.

 

[stocksie]

NickH Ref your other questions/points. Most F connectors are the same size.Its very rare to find other sizes. There is a compression fix type that needs a special tool to secure. expensive to buy!
The dish you took down will have had skew applied on fitting or maybe it was the type of LNB that has built in skew where the outer cover is square to the dish but the inner works are skewed. With a motor steerable dish the LNB does not need skew Moving the dish automatically takes the skew position when away from zero.
As for different signals from the different (co located) satellites at 28E. They will all show differing signals because of age and position drift etc but in general they all boom in to UK. This rather suggests your dish is not on the arc or is damaged.

 

[rolfw]

Also I did not realise that there are different types of F connector. The different types fit different types of coax cable as some have thicker core shielding (and maybe different diameters). And they only supplied 2 when you need 4 with the motor.

If your minidish was set up using the small guage Sky shotgun cable, then the connectors will be smaller, but as a rule and as stocksie says, the vast majority are for RG6 style cable and will fit most types, perhaps tighter on some cable types than others.

Following on from the whole day I spent wondering why I only got some channels before I found the above thread I have a couple of technical questions. How can it be that I got some channels but not others? Surely if I am pointing at the satellite correctly I should either be able to get all of them or none of them - explain please.

Some channels are transmitted more strongly and so can be received even when skew is off, whereas others are weaker and will be lost altogether.

The later versions of the Fortecstar LNB do have markings on top, but they are hard to see, it needs to be set to zero when using motorised systems, although as you have discovered, zero means the LNB connector is off at an angle.

 

[Channel Hopper]

NickH Ref your other questions/points. Most F connectors are the same size.Its very rare to find other sizes. There is a compression fix type that needs a special tool to secure. expensive to buy!
The dish you took down will have had skew applied on fitting or maybe it was the type of LNB that has built in skew where the outer cover is square to the dish but the inner works are skewed. With a motor steerable dish the LNB does not need skew Moving the dish automatically takes the skew position when away from zero.
As for different signals from the different (co located) satellites at 28E. They will all show differing signals because of age and position drift etc but in general they all boom in to UK. This rather suggests your dish is not on the arc or is damaged.

Taking each point seperately

1) F plugs come in all shapes and sizes (even for CT100 equivalent cable), depending on the specification of the purchaser , and the company willing to manufacture them at the best price.
I have seen screw on ones that wouldn't stay on aircore coax, ones that need the outer cover and some of the outer braid shaved off before they would fit. The ones used for direct burial cable is yet another version of the crimp type, but even these vary on the supplier and quantity.
Best advice though - if you only need one or two, don't get them from your local DIY store, but ask a friendly satellite installer and pay them in coins.

2) Each satellite transponder has its own skew setting, and the ground location for reception is not always correctly aligned for that offset.
Whilst it is true that an offset dish when motorised will mostly reduce the need for some skew control, and the cross polar rejection of the better universal LNB's will often show little need for improvement, this will not be the case when some transmissions (especially low symbol rate ones) are put on a transponder that has an opposite polarity competitor, sometimes on stronger power.
There is no substitute for a mechanical polariser, unless you are installing on a limited budget.

3) Some Astra 2 signals are lower 'signal' owing to them being used for non domestic use. Others are on the lower frequency transponders used for Freesat, and as such will be closely limited to exceeding the mainland with any degree of overspill when received on a standard sized dish - though quite why they used low frequencies for this task when the 12GHz part of the grouping would be better suited is anyones guess.
Besides, Northern Ireland is part of the UK, and a number of transponders do not 'boom' onto the West coast.

Additionally the higher the FEC / lower the symbol rate is inversely proportional to the ability to receive by most of the standard receivers on the market. Deviation from a standard non encrypted MPEG2 transmission, such MPEG 4 or encrypted transmission will also have different signal levels when looked at with a standard analyser showing signal levels.

 

[nickH]

Thanks guys! The F plug question was because I noticed different diameter center hole in ones I had bought earlier (for terrestial freeview cabling) and the ones in the kit and then I saw that Maplin list 4 types ct100, ct125, rg59 and rg58. Screwfix do a pack of 5 at good price.
You have also helped with the skew. I don't have the motor on yet and so I have a better idea what to do. Looking at the skew I now have it looks like I would still need to add skew even with the dish rotated. (This maybe because of the Fortec Star LNB?) I did have the motor on and got hte dish pointing at the satellite but took it off to reduce the number of variables when I was having my initial setup problems.
I wasn't getting different signals from different satellites, just different channels. I didn't know which satellite they were on. The Innovation seems to have picked up, or at least is showing, all the channels against Astra 2A. I get all fine now.

 

[3ssnave]

Hello
First many thanks for the previuosly posted advice on skew. I bought this kit last week & spent many hours going up & down my ladder. The signal strength was excellent (needle off the scale with zero gain) but I could not get any UK channels until I turned LNB as advised in this thread.
Now I would appreciate further advice. In my frustration I almost yanked whole sytem off my chimney, switched off DiSEQc & aligned it by loosening bracket on pole & adjusting elevation on motor until I had a high signal from Astra 24.2.
As a result I now get BBC HD & all UK channels, but I do not dare to use DiSEQc for fear of losing Astra 24.2 & spending many more hours trying to fix it. The zero reference will be wrong (south is probably pointing at 24.2E) & elevation is also probably wrong.
Is there a way to set reference at 24.2 so I can turn dish & easily come back to 24.2?
My main objective is to reach another satellite (not sure which ) to be able to watch French freeview channels.
Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[Channel Hopper]

Since you do have the meter , you could try to make the adjustments yourself, moving the motor around on the pole and checking for levels of the needle every time you move it. Trouble is, the gain of each satellite is different and to get the signal right for optimum performance requires playing with the attenuation knob on the meter as well. Then there is the manual movement East and West whilst holding some spanners, and finally the cold, which this week could cause you some frostbite even at mid-day when up near the chimney.


You might enjoy it, but believe me, I am taking the next three days off just to recover from the cuts that have opened up on three fingers from simply being out on a roof this week, with gloves on most of the time.


But when all is said and done you may be better off calling in an installer with an analyser rather than using the small meter that comes with the kit

 

[nickH]

You sound like you have had exactly the same experience as me! (I wanted German channels). I have found out this so far. The motor scans a very specific arc where the satellites lie. this means that it has to be set up very precisely. You will be able to get it to point at one satellite but the chances are that if the mounting is not perfect then it will move away fro hte arc after only a couple of degrees turn and so you won't find any others. The bracket with the maplin kit is not adjustable and the motor has to be mounted perfectly vertically to start with or the arc wil be wrong. I would say it was almost impossible to get it right with that mount. I am going to get T brackets and a straight pole. I will setup everything with the pole on a temporary mount on the ground - there are too many adjustments and it is all to sensitive to hope getting it right 10ft up on a ladder. Once I have it working so that I can get multiple satellites I will set it to Astra 2. I then just need (the theory goes) to mount the pole on the brackets, ensure it is vertical and rotate it to get Astra back.
The Innovation does have a 'Recalculate Position" option in the antenna setup. I think this must be using the current satellite as a reference in which case it would go back to the right place. This is only my assumption though.

 

[nickH]

My assumption has been that you just go for the strongest signal you can get but your comment and the fact that you can buy attenuators suggest that it is possible to get too much signal. Is that so and if so what problem does it cause?

 

[rbs_putin]

Guys I bought Fortec Star motorised set and would like to warn you that it's not the best place to buy these: contents checklist was saying the set should contain 10mm coaxial and 4 F-connectors, which were missing. The store said that I should instead buy these - cost extra 25 quid which makes big difference when you choose which satellite system to buy. Instructuin inside is horrible - I am still trying to figure out how to position the dish.

 

[bobble22]

Hi, read with interest all your comments, I have been up the bloody ladder all week end and at last have my arc from Thor .8W to Astra 28.2E, but I can not get any vertical channels on Astra, any ideas? Horizontal are all fine. I am yet to try various satellites inbetween apart from sirius.

As for the Maplin kit I'd love to know who puts these together, as stated above the mount is for a fixed 90cm dish and not the massive HH100 motor that goes on it, as you tighten the bolts on the motor support, so it clasps with more than two edges, it crushes the tube and aligning on an oval tube is interesting, I also had to bend the tab in on the dish bracket to fit to the motor pole as the bracket was designed for the fixed pole.
The first kit I had had been bashed about in the box and went back, I had 4x'f' connectors in there, the new one only had two and the receiver was not retail boxed, I don't think that it was that cheap looking at general prices out there and if it won't work properly I'm going for the 'not fit for purpose'.
The instructions are a waste of time.
I do hope it will work properly as I don't fancy all this again

 

[nickH]

My guess with your channel issue is that you haven't got your LNB aligned correctly. If I remember rightly I had this problem when I had my LNB 90 degrees out. Looking at the dish the cable should be hanging down to the right. Check out the link in my first post regarding LNB skew. After spending a long time up a ladder I found that despite having got it right to start with I ended up with it wrong.

 

[quatroxquatro]

Hi, newbie, 1st post!

I signed up today due to problems (as an owner and not a pro) setting up my Maplin HD Motorised Fortec Star kit. This was delivered last week and contained a Innovation STB, the 90cm dish, the mast motor and pole and a FSKUVN LNB. Am I right in assuming that the skew issue being discussed here is the same with both types of LNB? I have the exact same scenario, lo/no signal after having spent many more hours on the roof than I expected too! I was just about to get up there again, and try twisting the LNB and seeing what happened to the signal quality.

Cheers anyway!
:-righton

 

[quatroxquatro]

Hi, newbie, 1st post!

I signed up today due to problems (as an owner and not a pro) setting up my Maplin HD Motorised Fortec Star kit. This was delivered last week and contained a Innovation STB, the 90cm dish, the mast motor and pole and a FSKUVN LNB. Am I right in assuming that the skew issue being discussed here is the same with both types of LNB? I have the exact same scenario, lo/no signal after having spent many more hours on the roof than I expected too! I was just about to get up there again, and try twisting the LNB and seeing what happened to the signal quality.

Cheers anyway!
:-righton

OK, thanks to this thread and the information in here, I have answered my own question, the two types of LNB behave the same. The result is 707 TV channels and 77 radio, from A 28.2 . This means that the time I previously spent on the roof checking angles and placement, and using a simple satfinder to peak the weak signal I could find has paid off. Now with the LNB simply twisted to the centre mark on it's casing, things are fine!

Now I'm up for some serious channel hopping.

Thanks for sharing the information.

Hasta la vista

 

[simsat]

I've bought this kit and as mentioned above was pretty disgusted with the sorry state it came in and the the fact that the brackets didn't fit. As 90cm was too big I also bought a 45cm dish. Since then I've had no joy whatsoever. I've set everything up according to the motorised options on dishpointer as per the maplin instructions and still receive No Signal. I've manually rotated the dish using a signal finder and then verified using the sat finder iphone app. I've checked the cables with a voltage meter. I've tried 3 LNBS. Two Fortecs and one Greyline skewed to various angles including 0 degrees.

Still no Joy. The Fortec innovation's signal strength and quality bars have never budged. Any advice?
Longitude 51.5 lat 0.4

 

[Lazarus]

Did you go into the Receiver's LNB settings and ensure they were correct?

 

[rolfw]

I think we need you to upload some photos, as unless the receiver is faulty, or you have changed the LNB settings to something incorrect, you must be doing something wrong.

Which satellite are you lining up on for your due South? Have you looked at the setup guides in the sticky threads section at the top of this section?

 

[mattsnapper]

As a once newbie - just play around and see how the signal strength improves - then think about what you have done. For all the reading you learn lots by just 'playing about' Skew is almost as important as basic dish alignment and can be the difference in pulling in an extra load of channels. Strive for signal strength perfection and you will be amazed at what a wee turn of the LNB can do!

Nice thread!

 

[PaulR]

Agreed that fiddling around can work wonders with one amendment. Signal quality is more indicative than signal strength.