Newbie Here Peculiar problem

[gopalacharya]

Or maybe not. I'm new to this and several days of googl-ing has only resulted in increasing the confusion.
To start at the begining, I was having a propreitory Ku-Band receiver installation, to which the subscription expired and I stopped using it. After a few weeks it struck me that maybe I could still get some FTA channels on the equipment, and so I switched it on. It did not boot as usual, and said No Signal. But by now a bit of interest in Dishes & LNBs & Tuners was slowly & steadily growing, so I started reading up on it ( rather haphazardly, I'm afraid ) and bought a FTA reciever & a Signal-Meter.
The satellite to which the dish was pointed ( ST-2 ) wasn't in the List in reciever, so I did a Blind Scan.
A list of transponders showed up. Each shows a Signal Intensity of 44 or 45% and Signal Quality of 10%
Scanning each transponder results in No Program Found.
To my limited knowledge, it seemed that the dish might have moved enough to lose the channel tuning threshold, but retain the transponder detection threshold. On connecting the Sat-Finder ( signal meter ) I found that theory was wrong, because the nudging the dish either way caused a drop in meter-deflection. Oops, dead-end.
Does that look familiar to anyone, or what am I missing ? Any advice or ideas welcome.
Thanks,
Gopalacharya.

 

[Mickha]

Possibly the LNB is faulty but first check all your cables are connected correctly, no splits, and no water has gotten into them.
It is signal quality, that you need, and quite often receivers will show 10% even when the dish isn't pointing at a satellite.
Does the dishes elevation look correct?

 

[gopalacharya]

Thanks, Mikha.
I was a bit suspicious of the neat 44/45 & 10 for ALL transponders, but the googly came when I found the dish was perfectly aimed already.
Since the setup detected the transponders ( but not ALL the transponders according to lyngsat list ! Is that a clue ? ) I assumed the LNB was OK.
Maybe that is the problem. No harm buying one more of those. Inexpensive, and if it's not the LNB, it can be used for another sat ! ;-)
Thanks again,
Gopalacharya

 

[Topper]

Hi Gopalacharya
welcome to the forum, just check if the one's you are receiving are all one polarity i.e. all V for vertical or all H for horizontal, this being the case it would be your switching voltage circuit 13V to 18V being faulty. Let us know what channels you are receiving

 

[Terryl]

A bit more info on the system you have in-place would help us a bit, things like "What type/brand" of LNB, and are there any switches or other things in-line between the dish and reciver, and what brand of receiver do you have?

The settings you used on the receiver would help a bit, if the LNB frequency was wrong of off a bit you would get a low "S" on the transponders, using the wrong setting for the LNB type would also create a problem. (Universal vs Standard)

This type of info helps us a great deal, this way we don't have to use up the battery's in our crystal balls to try and envision as to what type of equipment you have in-place.

 

[gopalacharya]

Thanks, Topper.
Firstly, I am not getting any channels at all.
I got 28 transponders on ST-2 in a Blind Scan.
I forgot to mention, about 10 of them were C-band ?! ( frequency was around 5000M instead of 11,000M )
Is there any other way than an actual scan that the tuner would get a Tp list ? ( internet is not connected )
But both H & V were present in list.
Settings :
LNB Freq = 9750 - 10750 Both DiSEqC, 1.0 & 1.1 were = Disable, 22k = Auto,

Thanks again,
Gopalacharya

 

[gopalacharya]

Yes, Terryl,
I get what you are saying, but as of now much of this is over my head.
I was taking a chance that it may be a known problem & someone might recongise it right away.
Otherwise I'll go deeper. ( Did not want to overload people's patience right away. )
The LNB is : SHARP UNIVERSAL LNB BS1K1EL179A
You are right, there's a lot of choice for LNB frequency.... I just used the largest interval ;-)
Did I botch it there ?
I did try a few other LNB-frq settings too with same results, so thought it didn't matter.

There is just one LNB looking at ST-2, that was professionally installed a year ago.
I tried the propreitary recvr, but they are probably card operated for FTA too ( not sure ) so I got
an FTA-only recvr ( or so I thought ) called Skybox-F5s which I now find has ethernet as well
as a card-slot, but I am only interested in FTA so I'm not going to be buying any cards.
Thanks,
Gopalacharya

 

[Analoguesat]

If you are getting C-band results then something isnt set up correctly.

Is your receiver a DVB-S2 box? theres a lot of S2 transponders on ST2, and if your receiver is an old DVB-S capable box then you wont get anything from those frequencies

http://www.lyngsat.com/ST-2.html

 

[gopalacharya]

Just confirmed what Mikha said.
The 45% Signal Intensity is just Midscale for tweaking & 10% Signal Quality is just background noise.
That is the display even for a satellite that isn't being seen by the dish !!! :-)
( Still beats me how it got the transponders list )
I'll get another LNB this week, but meanwhile I'll see if I have messed up the settings on this one ( quite likely )
As I said initially, I'm quite confused at the moment. Maybe I need to read a bit more to make sense.
Now that the situation here is more or less understood, if someone can point me to the most suitable/relevant
webpage I'll be very grateful.
Gopalacharya.

 

[Terryl]

OK, you need to set your LNB type to "Universal" then the LNB frequency's to "9.75 and 10.6", this LNB will cover from 10.7 to 11.7 GHz with the 22 KHz set to off, with the 22 KHz set to on it will cover 11.7 to 12.75 GHz, it is a linear LNB.

If the channels you want on that satellite are on transponders in the 10.7 to 11.7 range then the 22 KHz will be off.

It should look something like this:

Satellite WXYZ xxW or xxE
LNB type = universal
LNB frequecy 9.75/10.6
Diseqc= none (if you don't have a switch)
22 KHz = off for the low band/ on for the high band

And so on.