Old analogue dish

FiddleSticks

There's been a satellite dish on the side of the house for several years now which has gone unused since I moved in. I guess it must have been there from the old analogue days. I connected it up to a digital receiver and got a load of channels on 19.2E but I couldn't get any signal from the dish at any other position. Is this down to the LNB being unsuitable and do I need to replace it with a universal LNB?

rolfw

Ideally for digital reception you should have a universal LNB, otherwise you will miss most of the channels.

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2old4this

How did you search for channels at other positions? Is the dish motorized (would be surprised if someone left a motor behind) or did you manuallly move the dish to the other positions? If the latter, then my first thought would be that you simply hadn't positioned it accurately enough. It's quite tricky after all.

To verify that your LNB is ok, check that the channels you found at 19.2e were both V and H (polaroisation) and both high and low frequencies. If so, then the LNB is switching ok and should in principle find lots of other stuff on other sats (assuming the dish is accurately positioned for each one).

2old
PS: please don't be insulted by this remark, but: you do realise that you need to move the dish to receive transmissions from different satellites...?

FiddleSticks

The dish isn't motorised, I just moved it by hand. All I did was to set up the box to receive a channel on 28.2E and very slowly move the dish in the hope of seeing the signal meter on the box show signs of receiving something but I got nothing.

The channels I'm getting are both H and V but I haven't got a clue about high/low frequencies or switching. I've got the LNB type is set to 10.0 on the receiver in order to receive anything so it's not a universal LNB.

As I can receive channels on 19.2E does that mean I should be able to receive channels from 28.2E using the same LNB?

rolfw

You can get away with typing in the incorrect frequency for the LNB and still receive a signal, all this does is force the receiver into making an incorrect calculation. So by typing in 10 instead of 9.75 say, the frequency that the receiver thinks is 11.250Ghz will in fact be .250Ghz higher, so if there is a channel or transponder on this frequency, you will get a signal strength reading.

The only way to check is to move the dish round to 28.2 and see if you can receive all of the free to air channels, or alternatively, look at the LNb and see what it has written on it. If this has been worn off by the weather, the chances are that it may need replacing anyway.

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FiddleSticks

I just had another go at repositioning the dish with no luck. I tried setting the LNB type to universal, 9.75 and 10.0 and was able to get a signal but no picture. I don't properly understand what I'm doing. I have no problem with getting a picture from 19.2E and getting the dish back to this position after I've moved it is not a problem. So why am I having trouble getting results from other satellites? I'm confused!