Hispasat Lost Signal Help.

[zza1pqx]

Hello.
I'm based in West Yorkshire and have an 80cm dish pointed at Hispasat (30dg West). I have a Zon receiver for Portuguese TV and up until a week ago it worked very well.
Recently the signal has been lost, ('check cable' dialogue coming up on TV), and so we got a man in today to check the dish alignment.
The man has been. He has checked the signal through the cable with a device inside my house and then after about an hour on top of a wobbly ladder he has said that we require an LNB which will cost us more and won't be available until Monday.
Having looked LNB up I'm a bit confused.
Unfortunately I'm at work and my Portuguese girlfriend has taken the mans word for it (fair enough).

My question to her was, has our LNB fallen off, broken or in fact ever been there?

Is it feasible that we could have been receiving a signal without one or is it a necessary part of the set up?
I don't remember ever seeing one.

I'm concerned that I may be paying for something that I have never needed before and that consequently the actual problem has not yet been diagnosed leading ultimately to a bill similar to the original cost of the setup.

So is LNB necessary? Will I already have had one and just not known about it? How fragile are they?
I would have been less cautious if the man had known where hispasat was.

Thank you

 

[Captain Jack]

Yes, LNB is the heart of the whole system. It will be the one sat at the end of the dish arm, where the cable comes from - that's the LNB. Without it, nothing will work.

Standard single output LNBs do not cost most that £10. If you're paying anything more than that for a part, you're being ripped off. It could also be that the dish moved out of alignment in recent winds, although it wouldn't take more than about 5 minutes to realign the dish with a meter...if the guy knew what he was doing (I am dubious based on your description).

Could also be the cable damaged or with a poor connection... water in cable.. anything.

Finally, it could be your receiver at fault but eliminate the cheaper bits first.

 

[zza1pqx]

Thank you for your prompt answer.
I thought about cable damage and dish alignment before I rang someone. I even went out with my iphone compass and tried to work it out (cos I'm an idiot).
If I'd had the chance to be there I could have asked. I would really like to know if the dish was in the right place and how he knows it's the LNB but to be honest, if he comes and it works after he's done then that will do me.
Not sure how much he's quoting the kit at but I expect to be paying for his time and danger money (my house is on a ladder unfriendly slope).

If it doesn't work after he's charged for the kit I'll be putting the dish in him possibly.

Thanks again.

 

[Captain Jack]

Nothing wrong with using the compass to work out if the dish is pointing in the right direction. However, it only needs to be a centimetre out to lose signal, so it's not as simple as looking at the dish.

I guess he could work out it's the LNB if he was getting no signal on his meter from anywhere in the sky. However, I usually have a few spare LNBs in my toolkit for such occasions. Makes it very easy to rule this out.

FWIW, I have had several LNBs just die on me with no warning. Some were a few months old, some failed after years of service.

 

[zza1pqx]

Was fixed early this week with a new LNB.
Thanks again for the advice.

 

[Lazarus]

That's good news - and thankyou for letting us know the outcome.