Philex 28212R Alignment problems

W

Westerlywonder

Member
My Satellite Setup
Philex 28212R freesat.
My Location
Galway, Ireland
I've been trying to install a satellite on my house in Galway.

I have put together the dish as per instructions given. However there are no elevations markings on the back bracket.
From checking forums in the last few days, i decided that this wasn't such a big issue and proceeded with the installation
of the satellite. There is a satellite finder in the kit, but it appears to be very sensitive and sets off very easily and has not yet pointed
me too a satellite.

So i set up a portable tv inside the house where i can see the screen and the signal/quality.
However i am still not having any luck. The highest signal reading i can get for astra2 is 54%, and the quality meter just flashes, i can get it to a
position where it will flash 35-39% every 2 or 3 seconds but this is all, i presume it is not supposed to be flashing but constant like the strength signal.

Although I am pretty sure i have clearance, I figured there might be something in line of sight or something so i tried to lock on to 13Ehotbird which i have a clear shot at for sure. And still i am having similar problems, a max of 60% signal strength and flashes of quality levels of 35-39%.

I have used sites as dispointer and satbeams as well as a compass to ensure i am pointing in the right direction.
Only discrepancy between the sites is the skew in the LNB angle, it is given as -16.4 on dispointer and -23.8 on satbeams, i am using somewhere inbetween...could this account for the problems i am having?

As i am new to the game i have decided that i must be doing something wrong, and as my head is fried at the moment i'm hoping it is something simple that i have overlooked.

If i could find an offset off of vertical for the elevation of my dish it could at least narrow down my options and prehaps better my results or am i having bigger problems elsewhere?
Or is the elevation of the dish more to do with the LNB arm than the actual dish face?

Any advice or solutions are much appreciated!
 
With most dishes the lnb face should be more or less vertical. If you post a picture tomorrow someone will be able to tell you if there is anything obviously wrong.
 
In anticipation of your picture your dish should look similar to this
 

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As requested, i have been in contact with Philex this morning and they suggested there might be something wrong with the box.
Anyone else have issues with the box?
It is pre programmed so basically all i can do is restore all default settings which i have done, even though i didn't change any of the settings in the first place so i wasn't that surprised when i didnt get any difference in signal or quality strength after.
 
So i decided to have a fiddle around with the dish again, refusing to let her beat me.

This time i thought i would try find a different satellite other than astra28.2 so i could get my bearing at least.
I went for E26 Badr46 as i though it would be pretty easy to find astra28.2 afterwards if i did locate it.

Results; on the E26Bard satellite setting on my receiver box, i gained 70% signal quality with 90% strength in less than5mins. I decided to tune it in to see if it would work.
After this when checking through the channels it became clear that the channels i had were from satellite astra19.2 and not e26badr, which means my compass is a good bit off but i'm letting it slide!

I then went to the satellite menu on the receiver and changed the satellite to astra19.2 to see if it had quality and signal strength also.
But it had not.

I am little confused but happy that my previous attempts were not down to my own stupidity and that i can indeed move a dish up and down and backwards and forth whilst reading signal quality.

With my new information i now know if i go 10deg east and 2 deg down i should be in range of astra28.2.

I realigned my dish and when i turned on the receiver again, it showed i still had signal quality from e26badr (20%)
I flicked to astra28.2 to see if i had some signal quality there but it showed 0. Whilst flicking through the different satellite options i realised i was also apparently connected to E9eurobird(35%quality), E4.8(15%quality) and 7Wnile(35% quality)

I dont like the trial and error game! Whats going on!
 
Which channels did you find on your scan?
 
cnn int is one of the first, das erste, canal + sport, canal +, arte, viva germany, prosieben schweiz, prosieben austria, kabel 1 schweitz, etc, loads of other channels.
 
Hang on - are you getting pictures or just the epg labels? If you are getting pictures we know the lnb is ok
 
Then the lnb is ok and the dish is pointing at the German orbital slot at 19E.

Not a disaster - its easy enough to realign the dish

Jump round to the Dutch channels on 23.5E, then onto the UK stuff at 28E.
 
its not so easy as the receiver satellite settings seems to be mixed up.
Still though i progress on as best i can.

I have turned my dish, to where astra 28.2 should be. and although my receiver still says 0%quality for this on the astra28.2 setting, it says i am connected to 4 other satellites albeit weakish values, so i am presuming the receiver is mixing them up but i am in the right area.

So i went to the astra28.2 transponder listings to see if any of them had quality signal, and 11778 has 75% quality and i can get a picture and sound from it.
I get some sort of sky advertisement channel.

I have searched most of the satellite tp listings in this general area of the sky and only the astra28.2 group has a sky promo channel at this transponder.
Can i therefore say that i am pointed at the astra28.2 group and that there is an issue with the receiver in that it shows 0%quality for the rest of the transponders?
 
More or less, yes - the problem will be that your pre-stored Transponder lists will be way out of date.

So, either find an option "Blind Scan", Auto Scan", possibly even "Network Scan" and flash that up.

Failing that, update the stored TP list to correlate with _http://www.flysat.com/28east.php then do a TP scan.



Edit: Also, you need to enter the LNB Settings Menu and ensure that Universal, Universal 1 or Universal 9750/10600 is selected (Whatever nomenclature your box uses) - If this is wrong, you won't get more than a handful of Channels.
 
The TP list already programmed matches that of the link _http://www.flysat.com/28east.php provided so i think i can more or less confirm that the issue is with the box.
There doesn't seem to be any auto scan or blind scan options on the receiver.
Also there is a note on it not to do any scans without a min of 50% quality signal as this will cause problems locking to satellites.

I will get a replacement for the box next week and see if i have any better luck.

MODERATION NOTE

Please don't post live links to outside sites.
 
So i have exchanged the box no hassle.

Connected her up, and i had a similar first experience. The astra28.2 setting showed 0% quality whilst pointed in the line of 11778 that i had previously found.

But i managed to locate a blind scan function (dont know how i missed it before) and once i had 70% quality on the 11778 frequency i set it off.
After which i had numerous channels, several shopping ones, sky news uk + ireland, several sky info channels, 6 bbc feed channels, god/ramadam/fitness/xxxx/flirt, movies and men, movies4men to name but a few.
The quality is perfect on all the channels that i have, however i do not have any picture for bbc, itv, channel4, more4, e4 to name a few. Although there is no picture there does seems to be some information coming through as the channel name comes up and in some cases there are program times and info for the channel.

Even though i have probably half of the channels coming through perfectly the receiver box is still telling me i have 0% when i have it on the astra28.2 setting.


The lnb is set to universal, 9750/10600, and the tone to 22Khz.

The transponder list is as given in the link noted in the previous post.

I am trying to figure out in my head how the different frequencies work, do they all project down in the same beam, are some of them wider than others?
If i have one should i have them all? Or are some of them of different quality and if so are the ones of lower quality easier to pick up?
Or is it that i am very close now and i need to do some final tweeking to collect the final few channels?
 
For a Universal LNB, you do not need to select 22KHz.

It should be automatically activated as necessary, so deselect it and blind scan again .

Also, there is the issue of the fine alignment of the dish, which may be worth tweaking slightly, and the skew (rotation) of the LNB , which should be twisted clockwise from top dead centre (as looking from LNB towards Dish) to roughly the two o'clock position in order to optimise reception of both polarities.
 
i cannot actually change it on the universal lnb setting, it is as you say, automatically selected at 22khz.
I only mentioned it as it was suggested in a separate thread that switching the tone to 22khz might solve the problem.
 
No, what you now describe is correct - the point of the "Universal" option is that the box then automatically provides 22KHz according to which Band a selected frequency lies in.
 
You probably just need to tweak the dish slightly, and try skewing, rotating, the LNB slightly, to improve signal quality. I can't tell from your original picture if the LNB is straight or skewed.
Can you manually scan in channels on your receiver? If so try scanning in some of the ones you are missing:
Code: 
http://www.lyngsat.com/28east.html
 
Problem solved.

I took the dish down and but it on a pole at ground level in the garden, and gave it a swoosh around.
Within a few mins i had close to 90% quality and signal on the astra setting.

So what is different? The dish is no pointing a few more degrees into the ground than i expected, not uncommon for offset dishes to take this line
however the bracket and wall attachment do not allow this much of a depression when the dish is attached to the wall.

So success, can confirm there is nothing wrong with the 28212R system, dish or reciever.

Why is it always so simple and why didn't o do this day 1, Lol

Cheers all for the help
 
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