Any Bright Ideas!!!??

[memail601]

I've got a motorised sat system - 1metre Viking dish, Invacom 0.3db lnb & Homecast PVR. The Homecast has a signal strength meter that seems to give a strength for the satellite & one for the channel (I'm guessing as the manual ignores this!!!). My problem is that on Hotbird I'm getting 92% on the sat measure & about 58% on the channel one, but both the 58% & (occasionally) the 92% drop to zero - then needs a move of the dish, which is really starting to bug me as it doesn't sort it for many seconds/minutes. ART is obviously worst reception (& never gives a channel signal at start), but other Hotbird channels are also bad, but not as bad. Obviously the channels freeze etc. Signal on Astra 1 is 96% sat & 68% channel, but rock solid.

Any bright ideas on what might be causing this & what I need to do / get done to sort it??

Thanks a lot in advance for any clues

Paul

 

[gameboy]

:-Welcome1

Who set up the motor?
Did it work and has now stopped?
What type of motor is it?
Can you get other East - West satellites?

Looks like the motor alignment is out from your original post.

:-Welcome1

 

[memail601]

Hi Gameboy

Thanks for the reply the dish was set up by a prof installer about a year ago, but has got worse over the last couple of months. Can get 28E but haven't tried the others since I got the Homecast. The type of motor is one of those chunky H-H diseq ones I think - sure I'll be on the extension roof to take a look at it tomorrow again, so will check then.

The odd thing is the move from 58% ish to zero, that makes you feel likes it's windy & being blown off course (not that it's windy when it does it!!!)

If the alignment is out will it be a case of changing the elevation angle, as best as I can by untightening the bolts & looking for a stronger set of figures???

Cheers

Paul

PS Thanks for the welcome btw - I didn't realised I'd joined a year ago & not posted - had to request a pw reminder when I tried to register!!

PPS Meant to say I've just moved to Thor at 1w & was initally getting 95% & 70%, but drops to low 50's at times - is this kind of drop-off normal?? The other thing is when tuning in on Hotbird little moves causes signal to drop to 0%, but Thor has a wider range & falls gradually.

 

[Jeff_19341]

From what I can remember, my Homecast S3000 is packed away, the two bars are the equivalent of strength (upper) and quality (lower). I does seem that you are off track, as mentioned. Could be either azimuth or elevation or even a bit of both. Try the old trick of flexing the dish (not lnb arm) up/down and left/right and look for improvement, this will indicate where you want to go.
Check that water has not got into the co-axial cable up by the lnb also.

 

[memail601]

Will do that tomorrow, when there's some daylight. Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[memail601]

Well I played around with it at 1W & now have 96% & 70% on Hotbird, but still keeps dropping to 0% for half a second & is still causing freezing - any bright ideas on how such a good signal (relatively) could be dropping to zero??

 

[mhku]

Bad weather? wind & rain = poor picture

 

[Channel Hopper]

All DiSEqC motors I have installed seem to have some play in them, as much as a degree or so. It might be the slight wind is moving the dish either side of the satellite.

Otherwise a noisy power supply may cause the DiSEqC motor to move a small amount. Power is always applied (for the LN and the noise from the PSU may be giving the motor commands that really are not there.

Have you found the dish to move of its own accord off a satellite ?

 

[memail601]

mhku - it's doing it on a nice day like today's been with little/no wind at all, so not that

Channel Hopper - I noticed that the H-H motor has a little play when I was tweaking it earlier, probably a degree or so sounds right. I've even got to a stage where I tell the receiver it's non-motorised to try & get round the thing sending signals when it shouldn't in case it's that. What do you mean by a noisy power supply??

When I move the dish west to east, hotbird builds signal strength nicely & then the quality falls to zero just after the point where the signal quality is highest - is that normal??

Cheers for the thoughts btw - I've put a call in with the installer who's an APSI person. Is there a list of the Association of Prof Satellite Installers still available or can anyone recommend one in the Notts area??

 

[Channel Hopper]

The noise I mention is interference from the receivers power suply, transferred into the line voltages , one of which is the LNB voltage.

The DISEqC system is such that the low power delivery means a motor that starts moving later than expected, and stops later as well. You might have a fine tune button somewhere on the remote (a nudge control is pesent on Samsung 9500s) but it sounds like the dish is moving too far before you halt it, and misses the main signal from the satellite.

 

[memail601]

Channel Hopper - I'll dig out the manual from the roof tomorrow & see if the (pigeon) English document makes any mention of nudge buttons or anything - certainly haven't seen any mention from memory.


It certainly feels like this thing has a mind of it's own & must be moving.

Thanks again!!