Motorised - Channel Quantity following general and blind search

Channel Hopper

Suffering fools, so you don't have to.
Staff member
Joined
Jan 1, 2000
Messages
35,536
Reaction score
8,554
Points
113
Age
59
Website
www.sat-elite.uk
My Satellite Setup
A little less analogue, and a lot more crap.
My Location
UK
I thought I'd start this thread to see whether I was doing something wrong in setting up a new receiver, and to allow others to post/boast some high numbers.

I've just installed a 5402 Technomate (updated with Phantompatch) on my smaller motorised dish and asked it to carry out a network scan on everything that it can get. I believe the furthest coverage is 53East to 43 West on the pole as it stands. This has replaced the trusty TM1500 Mk 2 with blind search as I found it ran out of capacity after just half the arc was scanned.

The dish is a 63 cm offset on a USALs motor, on the front end is a standard Ku band universal from Inverto.

Upon completion of the scan I have just over 6400 channels including radio,

Last night I asked the receiver to start on a auto navigation blind scan and went to bed.
This morning the receiver is still ploughing through and is now up to around 80% of the arc, and on the new search has found just over 6700, and is steadily rising.

Whilst I can see there are some duplications (when searching for Amos for example the receiver has caught some channels from the 5West slot, and the same with one other position), the list is more or less what I would expect.

Question 1. - With the TM5402 having a claimed 10000 channel limit, am I likely to exceed this before the second search ends, or have I already exceeded it with the first and second searches combining in the memory ? (in which case I may as well stop it now).

Question 2. - I haven't added orbital slots that are currently not in the memory (47.5, 46, 44.5 East, and 34.5 and 47West for example). In adding these to the memory and search, will I come up against a similar channel limitation, or possibly a maximum satellite limit the receiver han cope with ?

Question 3. - I will eventually use the receiver to run off the 1.8m on the roof which has coverage from roughly 66 east to 60 West, and have already strapped a C band LNB to the front end alongside the existing Ku unit. What is the likely channel numbers I can expect from this setup ?

Question 4 - What have others here received in terms of the maximum number of independent channels (including feeds) from a similar setup, and have they exceeded the limit of their receiver in doing so ?

Thanks in advance
 

Captain Jack

Burnt out human
Joined
Oct 21, 2006
Messages
11,797
Reaction score
7,980
Points
113
My Satellite Setup
See signature
My Location
North Somerset
Wow, Channel Hopper posting about satellite related stuff - unheard of :)

I used to do blind searches and auto-scans but found them like too much hard work. I either use pre-made channel lists or simply scan in what I know I will watch.
 

Lazarus

Retired Moderator
Joined
May 29, 2009
Messages
27,078
Reaction score
8,664
Points
113
My Satellite Setup
80cm Motorised.
Several small Dishes.
Much else.
My Location
North York Moors
I find them useful, but not entirely predictable/repeatable: When I "got into" 21.6W, I found that Blind Scan missed a handful of strong Channels that I knew were there. And repeating the Scan a few minutes later, having cleared the list, did not give consistent results.
 

Channel Hopper

Suffering fools, so you don't have to.
Staff member
Joined
Jan 1, 2000
Messages
35,536
Reaction score
8,554
Points
113
Age
59
Website
www.sat-elite.uk
My Satellite Setup
A little less analogue, and a lot more crap.
My Location
UK
I didn't have time yesterday to add a channel editor update, I used what is already in the receiver (after the March upgrade), but I have already carried out a network search to load up the transponder list as far as possible.

Yes, blind search can be hit and miss, but the default parameters in the 5402 can be adjusted, with the tradeoff being the time taken

As it is the receiver has now been scanning on its own for just over 16 hours and the list is now up to 9300 TV and Radio services, and I think there are two more positions for it to move to.

I may have answered Q3 and Q4, the total number will exceed 10000 once the receiver is connected to the larger dish.
 

Channel Hopper

Suffering fools, so you don't have to.
Staff member
Joined
Jan 1, 2000
Messages
35,536
Reaction score
8,554
Points
113
Age
59
Website
www.sat-elite.uk
My Satellite Setup
A little less analogue, and a lot more crap.
My Location
UK
And

'Memory full' indicator has just come up. 82xx TV and 17xx radio.

One thing that I have noticed since looking through the signal levels is the USALs system isn't the same as that on the 1500, which was happy with 0.05W inserted.

The 5402 prefers realignment with a figure of 0.02E which may account for the duplication of the Hispasat channels on 31 East.

Regardless, I've deleted all the radio, gropups of the known TV error channels and will then rescan some of the weaker satellites.

So my total figure is not too far from the 10k mark.
 

digi247

Regular Member
Joined
Mar 24, 2009
Messages
722
Reaction score
429
Points
63
Location
NW
My Satellite Setup
see sig
My Location
UK
I dont use the Blindscan on the technomate when i had the 5402 as it is well documented that the Patched and official firmware have the 45000sr bug and as stated previously it does miss a lot of transponders, The DRHD series are also the same. apparently the best Blindscan patch or official firmware for the 5402 is v112 which goes someway to remedy some of the blindscan shortcomings.

On the DrHD and an Acquired TM6800HD i use an Excel spreadsheet created by Jetsetw from another forum which basically you tick the Sats you want to scan including any Feeds from any particular sat and then either download the latest TP's from the 3 most popular listing sites either Flysat,lingsat,Kingofsat then dump the blank list onto the 5402 via usb and do the scan, The last time i did this sort of scan was on the Gibby 1.2 and just searched for TV channels with no feeds and the result from 57°e - 45° w which was my arc at the time came back with just under 9800 Tv channels
 

Lazarus

Retired Moderator
Joined
May 29, 2009
Messages
27,078
Reaction score
8,664
Points
113
My Satellite Setup
80cm Motorised.
Several small Dishes.
Much else.
My Location
North York Moors
I seem to spend more time getting rid of Channels (due to cr*pness!) than acquiring 'em.
 

Piltdownpaul

No.1 Spike Milligan Fan
Joined
May 27, 2012
Messages
2,011
Reaction score
687
Points
113
Age
55
My Satellite Setup
Skybox F3,Icecrypt S3500HDCCI, Technomate TM3000D,TM5400Ci Super, Samsung HD HDD Freesat Box,60cm dish for freesat, TD88 dish on a Skybox F3 57E to 45W.
My Location
South Leicestershire (Fleckney)
Indeed , some of these channels should stay on the satellite for a reasonable period so as to make it worthwhile me scanning them in. But that is probably the only reason due to a large amount of them being sh*** errr poor quality.
 
Top