Amos reception

T

TheToad

Regular Member
My Satellite Setup
1.5m motorised dish on tripod + C120 LNB -
Primarily used for Amos, Sirius and hotbird - hooked up to minidish for freesat
My Location
Leicester, England
evening all,

Until about 2 or 3 months ago i had a belting recption from Amos in central England. This is on a 1.5m dish and cheap LNB. Then suddenly one night it disappeared. I have >90% quality on Sirius, hotbird, astra of course, but jus tno dice with Amos.

When the wife lets me spend I'm going to get a more sensitive LNB with a long neck so i can move it in and out to get it right in the focus. Is there anything else I can try in the meantime such as a signal booster, or is my maths correct that 10 x zero is still zero?

many thanks in advance
Tony
 
A signal booster will not help you with anything unless you have an 80+mtr cable run as it will amplify the noise as well as the signal and will gain you nothing. Yes there are two European beams on Amos and if they have suddenly disappeared then I suggest your dish has moved, the lnb has developed a fault or the cable has become damaged or eaten.....

Hav you tried re-scanning? perhaps let us know what channels you were able to watch on Amos
 
Hi,
Thanks for the reply. The dish has most certainly moved because it's a motorised system :) With my 1.5m dish I'm picking up just abouth everything else in the sky (excet nile and the birds that are the wrong side of the house). I've also tried another LNB and even a different receiver.
The only other think I can think of is that the neighbour's tree 2 doors down has gained leaves since the winter and maybe that's just taking the edge off the signal. My dish is at ground level and I'm in a dip compared to other houses which can limit my view of the sky in places, but Amos looks to be in a clear spot.

Thanks for the advice on the booster, I'll drop that idea and hold out for a better LNB.

thanks agian
Tony
 
Well. Mr.Toad, I have a 1.1m Dish and currently get my usual small crop of Amos signals no problem at all, so that really rules does reinforce the idea that summat is amiss at your end.

I get OTV, 1Plus1, 1Plus1 Cinema, K1, K2, UBR fully locked and stable and I get Kiev STB, M1, M2, News 24, MTV Ukraine, QTV, CiTi on the margin.

ie 10772 H 27500 is bonzer and 10759 H 30000 is iffy.

It does sound from your symptoms as if you do indeed have a leaf (or similar) problem. Happens to me on Hellas during the Summer :-saw

How's your reception on Nilesat Verticals and weaker Beams from Thor? Of course, AB3 will blast through virtually anything but reinforced concrete!
 
привіт Tivu,
I have carefully checked things again and tried a few different transponders. I found good signals both sides of Amos in order to help me track it down. It turns out that my elevation was slightly off. I've not got the 10722 transponder but I can't get 11389 and 11572, the first of which has important channels for us like K1, and MTV ukraina.
But for Nile, I can't seem to get anything at all.

In the meantime my (very old) actuator jammed and when taking it apart I had a little accident with the motor internals and destroyed 2 washers and the brushes. So, I managed to pursuade the wife to part with a little cash with and having these few channels on Amos helped proved my case :)


I have a question on elevation, arc and LNB skew... I find that quite often, my elevation in good for one or two satellites but then to get others I need to alter the dish slightly, then back again for the previous satellites. If my pole is perfectly level, should I get around the whole arc without having to change the elevation of the dish?

About the LNB skew, I've found that one some satellites I need only a 2 degree skew, others need over 20. At the minute I've found the position that gives a good overall performance on all birds, is that how you'd normally do it?

thanks again for the advice chaps! I'll have a crack at getting Nile and Hispasat soon - this hobby is quickly becoming a fixation!

Tony
2E0PIV
 
TheToad said:
привіт ............
Click to expand...


Good one! It took me nearly seconds to paste that into Google to work it out .............

Oddly, I did actually learn the Cyrillic alphabet many years ago whilst studying (not very successfully) elementary Russian.

I'll leave the On Topic replies to others as SWMBO is calling :-crying
 
aha, You don't speak Ukrainian? I thought with having the channels you spoke the Lingo :)
Cyrillic is quite easy to pick up, shame i can't say the same for the grammar of slavik languages!
 
No, no - I can hardly speak English (I'm a Yorkshireman with half an Italian wife)


Hmm, seems I can't write English either: I meant I've got a half-Italian wife!

I get the Channels because, well, because I can :D
 
I have a smaller dish 90cm channel master on 1224 motor and can just get these on 4west

10722h 27500
10759h 30000
10806h 27500
10842h 27500
10890h 27500
10925h 27500

but here would need 1.2 plus to get anything more I think, I do have a cm 1.2 that I could try out.

anyway did you properly set your polar mount up with an angle finder to your latitude-90 and use that figure ?
 
Ay up, Wod, that's a useful list ............. must have a go in the morning and see if I can get those other TPs you mentioned.

Can't see why I shouldn't.

Edit: Actually, I can. Just realised some of them carry only Encrypted stuff, so I've discarded them (Manically organised, I know!).
 
TheToad said:
I have a question on elevation, arc and LNB skew... I find that quite often, my elevation in good for one or two satellites but then to get others I need to alter the dish slightly, then back again for the previous satellites. If my pole is perfectly level, should I get around the whole arc without having to change the elevation of the dish?
Click to expand...
Getting the pole plumb is is key but you still need to set up the mount in order to get it tracking the arc. To track down where you have gone wrong you need to say exactly how it is mis-tracking. On what satellites is it high and on what satellites is it low? Is it perfect on any satellites? What is your latitude and longitude? With this information it is pretty simple to work out what is wrong.
 
TheToad said:
привіт Tivu,
I have carefully checked things again and tried a few different transponders. I found good signals both sides of Amos in order to help me track it down. It turns out that my elevation was slightly off. I've not got the 10722 transponder but I can't get 11389 and 11572, the first of which has important channels for us like K1, and MTV ukraina.
But for Nile, I can't seem to get anything at all.

In the meantime my (very old) actuator jammed and when taking it apart I had a little accident with the motor internals and destroyed 2 washers and the brushes. So, I managed to pursuade the wife to part with a little cash with and having these few channels on Amos helped proved my case :)


I have a question on elevation, arc and LNB skew... I find that quite often, my elevation in good for one or two satellites but then to get others I need to alter the dish slightly, then back again for the previous satellites. If my pole is perfectly level, should I get around the whole arc without having to change the elevation of the dish?

About the LNB skew, I've found that one some satellites I need only a 2 degree skew, others need over 20. At the minute I've found the position that gives a good overall performance on all birds, is that how you'd normally do it?

thanks again for the advice chaps! I'll have a crack at getting Nile and Hispasat soon - this hobby is quickly becoming a fixation!

Tony
2E0PIV
Click to expand...


You may have some play on the mount or motor. Try setting up the dish again / tweak on your reference satellite.
 
Just to confirm that I can get all the transponders Wod mentioned, though I never know how useful my reception reports are living a bit further South than the UK

BTW, Wod has a 1.2cm one and Tivù half a wife? Is this what life in the UK has become under a coalition government?
 
sonnetpete said:
BTW, Wod has a 1.2cm one and Tivù half a wife? Is this what life in the UK has become under a coalition government?
Click to expand...

Excessive use of shrinkwrap to blame in probably both cases :)
 
sonnetpete said:
.....Tivù half a wife? Is this what life in the UK has become under a coalition government?
Click to expand...

Nah, like children, can't eat a whole one.
 
Thanks for the advice all, when i take the mount apart to fit the new motor tomorrow I'll see what I can work out. I'll probably have to post a photo of the mount.
What I did previously to get it right was that i just kept changing between satellite and putting stones under the concrete slab that the dish is on until I got it right for all birds.

SatelliteMan, I see you're in South Midlands, I'm in Melton Mowbray, anywhere near you?
T
 
TheToad said:
What I did previously to get it right was that i just kept changing between satellite and putting stones under the concrete slab that the dish is on until I got it right for all birds.
Click to expand...
Sounds flaky!

Check the motor and mount for play as Satelliteman says but the motor is not really relevant. The dish should track the arc and nail every satellite with or without the motor connected. If you could post how it is not tracking the arc on a few satellites, i.e. is it high or low etc it would be very easy to say what is wrong. Most likely thing is the mount axis is not parallel with the geo-polar axis... But if you've just got it bolted to a slab propped up on a few pebbles there's not a lot of hope getting it working properly.
 
TheToad said:
SatelliteMan, I see you're in South Midlands, I'm in Melton Mowbray, anywhere near you?
T
Click to expand...

50miles South but happy to help if needed.
 
OK, I've relocated the setup and this time made sure the pole is plumb (rather than the concrete slab).

On Amos we now have a 98% quality signal on 10722H & 10759H but nothing (well, about 40% but not enough to make a picture) on 11389H and tweakng the dish/LNB appears to have no effect. Any suggestions on how I can get this 3rd transponder which contains some great FTA channels we need?

Many thanks to all again!

Tony
 
TheToad said:
OK, I've relocated the setup and this time made sure the pole is plumb (rather than the concrete slab).

On Amos we now have a 98% quality signal on 10722H & 10759H but nothing (well, about 40% but not enough to make a picture) on 11389H and tweakng the dish/LNB appears to have no effect. Any suggestions on how I can get this 3rd transponder which contains some great FTA channels we need?

Many thanks to all again!

Tony
Click to expand...


That's good progress, Tony.

Well all that is left, if you are confident you've squeezed the max. out of the alignment, is a better and/or more accurately set up LNB.

I see from your Profile you already have a 0.1dB headline noise figure LNB, which is about the optimum I suppose, so did your tweaking include altering the position of the LNB axially? (I'm assuming from your reference to tweaking that the skew is definitely correct)
 
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