Fracarro penta 85 and multi lnb?

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morini3andahalf

Member
My Satellite Setup
Fracarro Penta 85
Humax foxsat HDR
My Location
South Wales
I currently have a fixed FR penta 85cm dish pointing at 28E feeding a couple of freesat receivers. Am about to order a vu+ duo to replace a humax foxsat HDR in the living room (the humax will be relocated to another room) and have been researching multi satellite options. First off I considered motorising the dish, but after reading posts on here and elsewhere I think a fixed dish with three lnb's pointing at 13E, 19E and 28E would be a better idea. I want the vu+ to have the abilty to record off any satellite whilst watching a different satellite.

I was considering the Inverto multiconnect kit with the narrow feed twin lnb's. Would this work OK given the square shape or will I need to think about changing the dish as well?

Thanks in advance.
 
Yes the Penta 85 would be fine for that multi LNB set-up, but you wouldnt need the Inverto kit as the spacing is 6 degrees & 15 degrees or 9 degrees depending on arrangement of LNB's.
 
Many thanks for the confirmation. I was looking at the inverto kit as I couldn't seem to find any multi lnb brackets specific for the penta. Provided it will work with the dish I think I'll go ahead and order the kit and lnb's.
 
morini3andahalf said:
Many thanks for the confirmation. I was looking at the inverto kit as I couldn't seem to find any multi lnb brackets specific for the penta. Provided it will work with the dish I think I'll go ahead and order the kit and lnb's.
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There are none specific to the FR Penta, there are none specific brackets that would work & be a less expensive outlay.
 
Although the FR Penta dishes are highly rated [installed a fair few now], it must be said that they do not perform as good for multi LNb setup with 9° of separation or 15°. They'll be fine for upto around 6°. Given the high powered satellites chosen, the dish should give a satisfactory though,.. but ideally, I'd use an 80/90cm circular dish.
 
One of the guys I know done away with the motor on his Penta 85 & installed the Inverto Multiconnect system for the same birds as the op but with 9e also.
 
Would be interested to see the spectrum measurements on Eb1, at a guess it'll be marginal. Cable length & quality would also play a part in the overall performance / SNR at the outlet / receiver. Given the O/P already has the dish, would be well worth trying :)
 
Is it down to its shape (Squarial'esc), how would one perform with a corner cut of it? Theres a highflat in the town centre here & when it was upgraded with a new SMATV the cowboys couldnt get the dish far enough away from the wall to point it at 28e so they cut off about 8 inches from the right corner!
 
Well I pulled the trigger and ordered the kit and lnb's, so I hope it will work OK. From reading other threads I'm guessing I need to centre on 19.2E and have 13E and 28.2E on either side? Dish is currently crntred on 28.2E. What complicates it slightly is the current setup is a quattro LNB into a multiswitch feeding a few receivers. I want to keep this part the same so all receivers can still get channels from 28.2E but the new Vu+ duo can get channels off all three satellites.
 
Yes, centre on Astra1 and place the other feeds either side. When using a multiswitch though, in general it's advised to use a dish the next size up due to the added noise floor. In theory an 85cm is fine with the multiswitch feed placed at focal, but if the LNb is offset [which it will be on the proposed system], the SNR might be slightly marginal for some Eb1 transponders. Suck it and see :)
 
Ah, I think I'm going to have to see how it goes on the current dish first. The dish is high up (above gutter level) and I'm not sure how I stand with respect to planning permission and neighbour acceptance factor if I try to put a bigger dish up there. The multiswitch works fine as it is now (dish centered on 28.2E), but I suppose I'm going to lose some signal strenth if 28.2E is offset?
 
Yes, a reduced SNR signal/carrier to noise ratio. Normally you want this as high as possible especially when using a switch. Might be an idea to set it up as close as on the ground first and tweak when back up.
 
Well, the multiconnect kit and lnb's turned up earlier today but I fear its going to be far too cold to play with this over the weekend. In the meantime I've been surfing the web trying to gain some knowledge ahead of having a crack at doing this work myself. I got a pro installer to put the dish up a couple of years ago, but I'm thinking extending it to a multi lnb setup should be within my DIY capabilities. I have another question though - looking on the dishpointer site it has 28.2, 19.2, 13E in the drop down list under multi lnb setups and (as previously mentioned) it says to centre on 19.2. However, it also mentions "dish skew", says to rotate the dish anticlockwise looking from behiond the dish but 73.9 degrees. Surely that can't be right? Seems a big number to me.
 
The LNB's get rotated to account for skew settings.
 
morini3andahalf said:
However, it also mentions "dish skew", says to rotate the dish anticlockwise looking from behiond the dish but 73.9 degrees. Surely that can't be right? Seems a big number to me.
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That is for the Maximum T85, Wave Frontier T55 or T90, all of which are designed specifically for multiple LNBs over a maximum 40 degree span. Hence the need to precisely fine tune the dish skew on the back ring for maximum signal over the range. Once that is done, the LNBs are skewed for each satellite.

You can ignore this and skew the individual LNBs. :)
 
morini3andahalf said:
Thanks guys.

Now I just need to wait for an improvement in the weather ;-)
Click to expand...

You may have quite some wait ahead of you!
 
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