Transponder scan is missing out channels

[Tom Mountford]

I’m a feedhunter having limited success. I use the SatcoDX website to get the transponder list for a satellite and manually add the transponders to my Technomate TM1000-CI (it took me a while to realise I needed to do that!!!). Here’s the FIRST problem, 95% of the transponders I program in receive no signal whatsoever even though SatcoDX shows me I am well within their footprint, and from the strong signal of other transponders I know the dish pointing must be spot-on. So if the transponder isn’t in use by a feed does it still broadcast black and sync to enable a receiver to find it… or is it totally ‘switched off’ and simply not going to show up in any scan? Do I need to program all the transponders into the receiver then at intervals re-scan for new channels to find ad-hoc broadcasts, saving the frequency to my favourites whilst it’s there?

Here’s the SECOND problem, of the transponders that do receive a signal the Technomate only finds some of the channels that should be broadcasting on them. Example: Eurobird-1 28.5E, Frequency 11.426GHz. My receiver finds 11.426GHz with a decent signal of 69%, and SatcoDX lists eight channels: OBE TV, Chart Show TV, POP, Tiny POP, Channel S, The Vault, TTV and BT Tower test card. All eight are MPEG2, SR 27500, FEC 2/3… in my mind the Technomate should find all eight channels but the BT Tower test card doesn’t show up. I’m getting the same problem with most of the transponders I programme in, channels that should be there just don’t show up???

Any advice???
Tom

 

[rolfw]

Tests and feeds are transient, sometimes they'll be transmitting and sometimes they won't.

 

[Satdude]

Tests and feeds are transient, sometimes they'll be transmitting and sometimes they won't.

Just like fishing finding feeds you have to be patient and also a lot of stuff is encrypted now.

Regards Satdude. ;)

 

[Tom Mountford]

Thanks... I thought I may need a little more patience - I found a circuit identified as 'SLVERSTN F1' but in the time between finding it and switching back to view it had vanished!

I have a theory for checking out if I'm doing it right by researching when things are likely to happen. BBC East (Norwich) is only four miles up the road from me and their feeds circuit is on Telecom 2D - so I guess there should be activity towards the end of the day with stories being sent back to base, and there's usually at least one live link during the evening news. I guess I'll tune it in and leave an E180 recording in LP all evening and see what it gets.

BTW - I've seen stills taken from BBC East links on some feeds sites so I assume they're not encrypted???

 

[Analoguesat]

Tom - you need to cross check your Lyngsat lists with other sites - the BT Tower test card disappeared over a week ago, which is why you cant find it. (It turned out to be a marker for a transponder change for ATN Global! ) Try this site in conjunction with Lyngsat:

http://www.flysat.com/ebird1-astra28.php