Cable length

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
Hello again!
I have a cable length of about 20 meters and there's still on bird I can't get despit enumerous tweaks to my system. I can't afford to buy a new LNB right now so have to make do.

Would I get much benefit re-routing the cable to get 10 metres off it? Would that pull in a singal that currently has the quality level too low to get even a single frame of a picture?

For one other bird (Hellas 2) I've tested in another dish on a sitck and held it aloft (seriously) and proved that the houseon the hill next to ours is blocking the signal. Do you think they'll mind if I cut a slot through their house so the signal can come through? :)

Tony
 
20m shouldnt cause a problem.


What satellite are you wanting and what size dish are you using - is it the 1.5m in your profile?
 
Yes, it's the 1.5m my profile which is now set up beautifully and works every time :)
I need to get Amos 3 which is the beam pointing over Ukraine and Romania and we're well out of the footprint. I get a great signal on Amos 2 but I'd lilke to get 11389H on the other beam. The strength and quality bars seem to settle but not high enough to get a picture.
I know I need a much better LNB but the funds are simply not available right now and won't be for a few months (new baby and car servicing due in month)

The edges of the dish have a few small dents, but these are on the side of the dish and no on the dish surface itself, will this make a difference?
I've considered a signal booster but I understand this will just boost the noise and won't get a signal lock, is this correct?
 
Your assumption about signal boosters is, in theory, correct. They are generally used to overcome losses on long cable runs and by the very nature of the device can only add noise, not improve it.

But the theory does not always seem to apply in practice, so it might be worth trying one - I got one for about £3 from that auction site.

If pennies really are short (as they are with me), then it could be a "back of the sofa" job.

But you already know the real answer - better LNB and/or lower cable loss and/or better alignment and/or bigger dish. Whichever is the cheapest!
 
TheToad said:
I've considered a signal booster but I understand this will just boost the noise and won't get a signal lock, is this correct?
Click to expand...

Don't waste your money. If it's a short to medium run, you won't see any significant improvement.
 
satelliteman said:
Don't waste your money. If it's a short to medium run, you won't see any significant improvement.
Click to expand...

The run is about 20metres but 10m of that is used to route it nicely, I could dig under the ground and cut 10m off easily. The cable was only cheap so maybe I'm getting a lot of loss there. I also have 1 join which I use ot steal the signal when connecting to my PC Card.
 
A join? Not good - almost always lossy and that is almost certainly going to be a bigger problem than the quality and length of cable in your case.

How is this join made?
 
Tivù said:
How is this join made?
Click to expand...
With 2 connectors and an female-female adapter. Could one join be enough to sabotage a weak signal?
I guess I could replace the cable run and then just steal the cable from the back of the box if Ineed it for the PC card.
 
Yes - it's very difficult indeed to avoid mismatches/reflections/degradation of screening etc. that can even affect some frequencies more than others.

Anything at the margins is going to be vulnerable.

And yes, if your box has IF Loop -Through, that's a far better way to "steal" the signal. Best to use a twin output LNB and separate cable run, of course! But I hear what you say about the pennies.
 
Best thing to do is buy some decent quality cable and run 10m direct from the dish to the stb. If you get a better signal you know its worth changing the cable run. If it doesnt then you know you probably need a bigger dish / different lnb.
Pesonally I dont think you will get it without a bigger dish - the newer birds are engineered so the drop off at the edge of the coverage area is much steeper than on older sats.
 
the issue could be the wrong lnb used on the dish as it wont be seeing all the dish, what is the cheap cable you used it wasn't the stuff that sellers call rg6 was it as the stuff over here isn't the proper rg6.

10metres of wf100 wouldn't break the bank and as others have mentioned loop through the card in the pc
 
One way to check if anything is to be gained by a shorter cable run would be to take receiver and TV into garden and connect a spare bit of coax to the LNB. If there's no improvement at least you will be able to avoid the frustration of investing in new cable for nothing. I often take this route when peaking my dishes etc., but don't use my main telly. I'm also very wary of mains electricity outdoors, so safety first!
 
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