Advice Needed Would someone mind scanning Turksat 42E?

[Ghostleader]

That's a 80cm size class dish, Paisley, West central Scotland.

Sent from my Lenovo TAB 2 A7-30F using Tapatalk

 

[dankargo]

Can someone please help explain this.

Tonight when I switched on (and considering the problems I've been having sustaining a good signal level with the TRT HD transponder on this satellite), I switched to TRT 1 HD and got the "No Signal" message. The SNR had shot down to 44% along with other channels on the satellite (some coming in at just 20% and unwatchable).

I then thought I'd dig into the Longitude/Latitude settings to see if tweaking those would help. Simply changing the longitude from "0.017 E" to "0.016 E" and upwards wasn't doing much. I then changed the E to W and low and behold, I was no longer seeing the no signal message but still the signal was pretty poor.

I then thought I'd try tinkering with the Latitude settings - I've always been hesistant changing them from their real value but on this occassion, I thought I'd give it a go. I changed from "51.50" to "45.00" and boom, TRT 1 HD coming through at a very strong 80%. Checked all the other channels and I'm now receiving a better signal than ever before.

I checked a few other satellites on the arc (45e, 19.2, 13e, 0.8w) and they all seem to have improved signal wise.

What's possibly happened here, dish moved out slightly at some point? Am I ok to leave the box at these 'bogus' longitude/latitude values or will it screw things up along the way?


Edit: Just having a think, I think I may have worked out why I lost so much signal on 42E when I switched on today. Last night I moved the dish to 0.8w and altered the default longitude/latitude by a few degrees (obviously the dish is centered at this satellite). I then moved it back to 42E so am I right in thinking, on its move from center position, its no longer tracking correctly? Should lat/long always be changed on the 0.8 sat?

 

[BlindFaith]

I'd be interesting to know what SNRs other people receive from this sat, preferably also from an 80cm dish so I can compare.

According to your own description, you only have 70cm dish ;)

Edit: Just gone back through my conversations with the installer, the dish I have is 70 x 80cm

 

[dankargo]

I don't even really know what I have to be perfectly honest. The dish I bought was 80cm but according to my installer it isn't "really" 80cm, more like 70cm+. I'm guessing a bit like how hard drives do not have the same amount of memory as stated on the box

I called my friend for some help and he advised me not to change my latitude but instead to change the longitude to 0.2, 0.4, 0.6 instead of going from 0.017 to 0.016 as apparently that won't do anything. Funnily enough, just one page previous, someone advised me to do the very same thing but I have no idea how I can possibly do that on my Openbox. The values are defined with "000." at the start. Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[sonnetpete]

The values are defined with "000." at the start. Does anyone have any ideas?

The "000" will be full degrees. For now alter your 000.15W to 000.20W for example. If you want to experiment try altering it to 001.00W (1 degree west) and see what difference it makes.

 

[dankargo]

Wow thank you. Changing to 000.20W gave me a small increase in signal so I kept experimenting by increasing by 10. Now I've peaked the signal with my longitude set to 000.80 W - I'm getting the TRT HD channels at 81% now. Have looked briefly at other sats and they have all benefited from an increase in signal. Nice to have my latitude settings back to their correct figure.

How odd though that changing the longitude from E to W would have such an affect.

 

[sonnetpete]

How odd though that changing the longitude from E to W would have such an affect.

Not really, you are compensating for a probable slight misalignment of your set up. However the misalignment is quite small, it's possible that tightening the motor mounting screws unevenly after you've peaked the signal could produce that problem. When I realign my large motorised dish, I keep an eye on the meter's signal level whilst tightening the mounts.

 

[dankargo]

Solved!

A friend of mine suggested I try the "Go to 0" option in the motor settings which would send it back to its reference point. I did this and once the dish had finished moving, returned to 42E. The signal rate had dropped to 70% but at this point, I was using the rogue latitude/longitude settings (which somehow gave me a boost in signal before hand). As soon as I put my correct longitude & latitude in, the signal shot up to 80%.

Not sure if the motor got itself in a wobble at some point but all seems to be fine now

 

[Archive4]

Solved!

A friend of mine suggested I try the "Go to 0" option in the motor settings which would send it back to its reference point. I did this and once the dish had finished moving, returned to 42E. The signal rate had dropped to 70% but at this point, I was using the rogue latitude/longitude settings (which somehow gave me a boost in signal before hand). As soon as I put my correct longitude & latitude in, the signal shot up to 80%.

Not sure if the motor got itself in a wobble at some point but all seems to be fine now