Astra 2A North Beam in Central Italy

Recently purchased a new dish, 125cm offset, and Invacom 0.3 lnb for sky digital. However, I only see Astra 2A North beam from 6pm to 10pm and only one transponder! It's the one with Plus and Sky One Mix. No British Eurosport or any of the movie channels!
I'm located an hour and a half east of Rome where I'm told they see all the channels 24 hours with the same size dish!
How can this be?
D.

I also live in central Italy, in Vasto (60Km South of Pescara near the Adriatic Sea) and I can confirm difficulties for Astra 2A North Beam. I have a cheap (emmesse) 120cm offset dish, recently I bought a new Invacom 0.3db LNB (slightly improving reception).

I checked in detail reception of transponder TP24 12168V (the one with Channel 4). Channel 4 starts to be visible at about 18:30 and remain visible till 24:00.

The following results were taken at the end of June. SS means Signal Strength and SQ means Signal Quality:

TP24 12168V at 18:20 SS=10% SQ=10% image drops
TP24 12168V at 18:45 SS=10% SQ=20% image good
TP24 12168V at 19:10 SS=10% SQ=20% image good
TP24 12168V at 19:40 SS=20% SQ=30% image good
TP24 12168V at 19:54 SS=20% SQ=40% image good
TP24 12168V at 21:00 SS=20% SQ=30% image good
TP24 12168V at 22:25 SS=10% SQ=20% image good

I also checked other transponders on 2A North Beam and results are the following:

TP03 11758H at 22:00 no signal
TP04 11778V at 22:00 no signal
TP07 11836H at 22:05 no signal
TP08 11856V at 22:05 no signal
TP11 11914H at 22:10 no signal
TP12 11934V at 22:10 no signal
TP23 12148H at 21:55 SS=10% SQ=20%
TP24 12168V at 21:55 SS=10% SQ=30%
TP27 12226H at 21:57 SS=10% SQ=30%
TP40 12480V at 22:00 SS=10% SQ=50%

As comparison on 2B North Beam I have the following result: (other transponders are the same)

TP35 12382H at 22:25 SS=30% SQ=90%

I found that adjusting the skew was very important to improve reception of 2A North Beam. According to Astra, "2A North Beam" and "2B North beam" have the same footprint, instead in Central Italy there is a big difference in signal strength.

Previously (2 years ago) I had a 80cm dish and it was perfect for receiving everything excluding "2A North Beam" and 2D.

My receiver is a Pace 2500 (according to many peoples not the best one for fringe areas).

Hi,

I'm located in Rome these are the results I got last March with my 0.8 dish and GDS 310 Grundig ( only the Signal Quality is reported as the Signal Strength was always 100% ) :

Time 08:00 PM CET
Date 21 March 2003
location Rome (ITALY)
dish 0,80 m
cable 10 m
box GRUNDIG GDS 310/S
software 3.1a.5
lnb 0.7 db

11758 h 2 07d3 10 % 2an
11778 v 2 07d4 10 % 2an EPG
11836 h 2 07d7 5 % 2an
11856 v 2 07d8 20 % 2an
11914 h 2 07db 10 % 2an
11934 v 2 07dc 20 % 2an Sky Cust
12070 h 2 07 e2 70 % 2bn
12090 v 2 07 e4 80 % 2bn
12148 h 2 07 e7 30 % 2an
12168 v 2 07 e8 30 % 2an Channel 4
12226 h 2 07 eb 30 % 2an
12304 h 2 07 ef 70 % 2bn
12324 v 2 07 f0 80 % 2bn
12382 h 2 07 f3 80 % 2bn
12480 v 2 07 f8 30 % 2an

I'm still amazed by the difference in signal between the 2A North and 2B North ( 2B north even better than the South Beam for some frequencies!).

In addition since May I noticed a general degradation of the signal form the 2A North beam, at the moment I can receive 11778 from 8:00 AM to 7 PM only.
Thankfully 12168 is still good enough to view Channel 4 at any hours of the day ( even in light rain condition ).

Is there any specialist out there who can explain me why ?

Ciao

PS : can you confirm that after having lost the BBC Channel, as an owner of an old ( not matched ) FTV card I'm going to loose very soon Channel 4 and 5 as well , because of card deactivation ?
Please tell me not.... I'm desperate !

Not time to despair yet, there may still be a solution to this, you may have to go without for a period, but I reckon that some time in the near future, things will be resolved.