Thor 3 and Sirius 4

shamone

shamone

Regular Member
My Satellite Setup
Vu + Solo 4K, Viark SAT (4K), Mut@nt HD51
1.4M Famaval Dish, Technomate TM-2600 Super,
Inverto Black Ultra PLL 0.2dB Twin LNB, 53E - 30W + Gibertini 60cm 28E
My Location
N.E UK
For some strange reason I am picking up all transponders from Thor 3 and the Nordic beams off Sirius 4:)


I was never able to pick these up before. The only change I made was to adjust the dish the other night to pick up a feed off the Telecom 2D sat and then I moved the dish back to its original position:confused:


All good and I hope it lasts:D
 
Interesting.

I am scanning at this very moment .................
 
Thor is as it should be - 22 new Channels (shows how long since I last scanned!), but none from Thor 3.

1.1m dish (in rain - obviously, as I'd set today aide for gardening) not far from you.

Looking at Sirius now.
 
Sirius also as expected - no Nordic.

You are a man alone!
 
shamone said:
I was never able to pick these up before. The only change I made was to adjust the dish the other night to pick up a feed off the Telecom 2D sat and then I moved the dish back to its original position:confused:
Click to expand...

I would guess that you have perhaps inadvertently nailed the very fine elevation adjustment needed to get all the transponders. It may well be that if you breathe on the dish you may loose them again. Of course, the Gibertini 1m trumps the Triax 1.1m :)
 
hexah said:
Of course, the Gibertini 1m trumps the Triax 1.1m :)
Click to expand...

No need for bait .......... I agree with you. If I knew then what I know now, a Gibertini it would have been!
 
Well, Triax did make good dishes apart from the wacky elevation adjustment.
Nobody expected them to make such a hash of the 1.1m. If it were not for this forum they may have got away with it. :-Nooo
 
Ok still got these birds so posting some pics of the signal from the TM500.


Has anybody else had any luck with these?
 

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What exactly did you do to the dish?
 
Just checked 11862 V 27500, on 5E, and no problem picking it up in the North West, on a 1.2M dish, and it's pouring down !!!!!!

Not getting anything on the UPC 1 West listing though.
 
That is a great help.

It is possible that one of the TWTA has degraded to the point where it fell below the power output needed and the operator has switched to one of the backups, which is why the signal is suddenly stronger. This kind of degradation and occasional failure is most common during and after the solar outage periods compared to any other time of year.

Another possibility is that there have been complaints about more frequent outages with HD channels during the winter weather (though I am not familiar with the HD situation here). Due to the higher bitrate and poor FEC. The consumer will not necessarily understand why a bigger dish is needed, so the only cure may have been to switch to a slightly higher output power to compensate, rather than expect consumers to increase their dish size. _Sky in the UK has opted to increase dish sizes with the new Mark 4 Zone 1 dish, though it really was a bit small in the first place (and they do not give a hoot about those who have the much smaller Mk 1 and 2 already installed). They should have properly considered satellite power degradation in the first place, quoting the end of life power is a standard practice in the satellite world.
 
I had something the same at the end of last year. I was hunting for channels and moving my 1.1 motirized triax around when i moved back to sirius 4 i done a scan and found lots of channels from the nordic beam, but when my clone dreambox 500s went bannanas i had to do a reset and couldn get them back.
 
I can usually receive the Thor 3 Nordics here in the western part of East Anglia. SQ does appear slightly greater now though.

This one comes in at SNR 45%. Same with the UPCs on 11727V.

That's with a SMW 1.1 dish.
 

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Same here, was watching a few earlier on. 1Music, TV5 and Visjon Norge.

Like jpsr this isn't the first time I've picked them up. With Viasat broadcasting quite a few Russian language channels I thought the wife was going to be able to add some more channels, but then they dissappeared and now they're back again. I wonder how long for this time. Probably not long enough to make it worthwhile sorting out access. :(
 
Thor 3 is reaching the end of its service life.

It was launched in June 1998 and had a life expectancy of 12 years. When the services eventually migrate to Thor 5 or 6, the signal from the Nordic beams will go up to around 48dBW (i.e. good signal on 70cm) on the eastern seaboard of Britain, so there will be a real leap in signal strength and quality. No indication yet of when that will happen.

Sirius 4 was launched in 2007 and has an expected lifespan of 15 years, so may be around until 2022.
 
Now that the rain has finally stopped I'm getting all the UPC channels on 11727 V 28000
 
Both birds now breaking up due to rain and heavy cloud.


I do not know if it is coincidence but I started to pick up Sirius the day after it was announced that Viasat have got the premiership rights for the next 3 years.


If they increase the power abit then more people in the UK can pick the signal up and may subscribe to Viasat to watch the footy and boost the revenue. Just a thought and probably wrong but hey ho :)
 
No hope of that, though i am sure that would make many people happy!

It does give some weight to the HD possibility, they would be deluged with complaints from their subscribers if the CNR and BER was not good enough and peoples viewing was interrupted by the usual monsoon like 'barbecue summer'.

(Though power issues are just a likely).
 
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