Help With Maplin SD sattellite kit elevation much appreciated.

H

Henry1992

Member
My Satellite Setup
none as yet
My Location
England , Devon
Hi there,
I am a newbie who is currently trying to align a Maplin SD satellite kit dish to the 19.2 Astra satellite. I live in the countryside near from exeter in the SW of England and i used dishpointer.com to get the alignment settings for my location, it gave me the elevation setting of 28.0 degrees. However, when i align it to what is 28 degrees on the elevation bracket the dish is pointing flat or even slightly downwards. Is this right or have i done something wrong?

Help would be very much appreciated,
Many Thanks,
Henry.
 
That's because of the offset of the LNB arm, which will be about 25 degrees.

And it is possible with some dishes to assemble the back bracket upside down (for other latitudes). Check you are happy.

For Astra, the Dish face should be a no more than a couple of degrees off vertical, so you seem to be in the ballpark.

If the LNB is a Fortec Star FSUKVN, then the Skew is weirdly different in that zero skew occurs when the F connector is at four o'clock!
 
Thanks very much for your reply. I do have the FSUKVN LNB but there is a scale on it with zero skew being when the F connector is pointing downwards, should i ignore this and take zero skew being at 4 o'clock? Also is 4 o'clock facing towards the face of the dish or from behind probaly a stupid question i know but thanks :)
 
You are right and they are wrong!

Looking towards the Dish, the connector is at four o'clock.

So you'll need to turn it another few degrees (dunno exactly without checking, but I'm sure you have access either to suitable calcultors or can just do it empirically.

Here is the commonly referred to Thread about this LNB
 
I guess some on here would disagree, but if you are a newbie, you can pre-tune your receiver to a channel that has no encryption, it is sometimes simply easier to play around with the Sat Dish until you see a picture on your screen. Sometimes you can over calculate and worry about angles etc especially when aligning to a strong bird like Astra. You will probably learn more and understand everything better by trial and error than reading the instruction manuals and studying the Clarke belt. Just play and have fun until you achieve the best results, THEN read up and try and understand why . . . just my opinion however :)
 
Sorry but could anyone help me with another problem that i encountered? When i connect my satellite finder to my dish using the short cable for the sat finder into the LNB and the longer cable to connect the sat. finder to the reciever box. it does not light up and work. However when i use the long cable to connect to the LNB then the shorter one for the box it does work. Is there an immediatly obvious problem here? thanks
 
Yes!

I had this and it confused the issue no end.

The short cable stub is made of really poor quality cable with an extremely thin centre core.

This can either break off, or be bent over upon attempting to mate it with an F socket or just not make good contact at all.

Solution: A metre of spare proper cable and two F connectors: Make a short cable up yourself and bin the one supplied.
 
Hi again,
Ive now managed to locate the Astra 19.2 E sattelite, and are recieving a number of channels around 160 free to air channels however the majority of these are spanish or other, only a handful are my desired german I am missing some i should get like RTL amd ORF . I have tweaked the LNB skew (its the odd fortec star FSUKVN) to what seems to be the maximum signal quality of 78% and an intensity of 90% also i only get any type of signal when the LNB frequency is set to 10050 on the receiver box(strangely i get nothing on the universal 9750 - 10600). Could anyone give me advice on what i may be doing wrong or what I could do to receive German and Austrian channels?
Many thanks
 
Hi,
you need to set the LNB type to universal.

You should delete all your channels, and rescan with the LNB set to universal.
 
Henry1992 said:
Hi again,
Ive now managed to locate the Astra 19.2 E sattelite, and are recieving a number of channels around 160 free to air channels however the majority of these are spanish or other, only a handful are my desired german I am missing some i should get like RTL amd ORF . I have tweaked the LNB skew (its the odd fortec star FSUKVN) to what seems to be the maximum signal quality of 78% and an intensity of 90% also i only get any type of signal when the LNB frequency is set to 10050 on the receiver box(strangely i get nothing on the universal 9750 - 10600). Could anyone give me advice on what i may be doing wrong or what I could do to receive German and Austrian channels?
Many thanks
Click to expand...




Apart from the LNB setting mentioned, I wonder if you've actually found Hotbird at 13E instead .................. Just need to be 100% sure.

Do you have Canal 24 Horas - If so, that's Hotbird

Do you have any of TV3 Catalunya, Andalucia TV, Aragon, Canaria - If so, that is 19.2E

So, you did not need an Installer after all - well done!

Even if it is on Hotbird, you've now got the idea and the final shift to Astra 1 should be a doddle (6 deg further East and a tad down)

Bottom Line:

1. Prove which Satellite it is (And rely on what you've actually received, not upon the label attached to the list you scanned!!!)

2. Select Universal 9750/10600

3. If on correct Satellite, scan again

4. If on wrong Satellite, align correctly and scan again

5. Re-tweak your FSUKVN skew to get best results on both H and V Channels.
 
Henry1992 said:
cheers mattsnapper does pre tuning it work with digital?
Click to expand...

yes - just like putting the radio to 909am and walking around the house and moving the ariel until you get the best reception :)

PS how are you getting on... when people ask lots of questions and then get helpful replies its always nice to know how people are progressing or sometimes you assume they have simply lost it, hit the dish with a hammer and removed this forum from their bookmarks :-rofl2
 
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