Trouble finding sats after everything setup...

A

alicalic

Member
My Satellite Setup
Setting up motorised system
My Location
Armagh, NI
Hi

Excellent website, was hoping for some help with my little hobby, and what a class hobby it is to, once I finally get it working.

Here is some backround details, I have
  • Coolstream hd1 box
  • 90cm fortec star dish
  • nikkia monoblock lnb
  • nikkia motor
  • dish is wall mounted
  • maplin sat finder
I installed the dish on the side of the wall facing south, I have made sure the wall mount is level.
I setup the dish with the correct latitude and evaluation on the motor according to the manual.
I made sure the motor was set at 0.
I used the maplin sat finder to correctly find Thor 1W and set the dish at that angle.
I made sure the motor was set for 1 to match Thor.
I was able to scan in all the channels on Thor and recieve them.

Problems...
  • Moved the motor one movement at a time to get other sat's no joy.
  • Tried using USALS to search for other sats didn't work.
  • Set the motor to move east and west and stop when it got a valid signal no joy.
  • Have moved the dish good few times and when move the motor doesn't pick up anything.
My Latitude is 54.4
My Longitude is -6.3
  • I set the Elevation Angle to 36 on the Motor
  • I set the Latitude Angle to 54 on the Motor
  • The dish is nearly what the manual has said 22.4
Any help would be greatly appreciated, this is all new to me might be doing something completey wrong.

Cheers :confused:
 
Please fill in your profile location, it may help when answering questions :)

Regarding the dish; your not tracking properly. You need to input your coordinates into USALs and drive the dish to 5W, then align.

Check out our motor dish setup guides.
 
Your longitude reading is your true south position, negative results = West positive = East, so as Satelliteman states you're best aligning to 5W not 1W.
 
Hi

Thanks for the help again very much appreciated. My location is armagh in northern ireland.

I have put in the coordinates into USALs forgot to mention that.

So if I set the motor to 0 to start off with, scan for 5W and the box will send the motor to 5W.

Then move the dish to 5W and use my cheapoo signal finder to find 5W i should be sweet. I also got dish finder for the phone it is very handy.

Does it sound as if the mount pole might be off, I checked it all around with a spirit level and it seemed ok...

I have checked that many guides on the site my head is spinning :)
 
alicalic said:
Hi

So if I set the motor to 0 to start off with, scan for 5W and the box will send the motor to 5W.
Click to expand...

Yes, once you have inserted your location into USALs.
 
alicalic said:
Hi


Does it sound as if the mount pole might be off, I checked it all around with a spirit level and it seemed ok...
Click to expand...
It either is or it isn't. Check two sides of the pole 90 degrees round from each other and if its vertical its fine. With dish sent to 5W, and motor adjusted on pole and dish tilted appropriately to pick up 5W, it should all work fine. Also make sure that the dish is mounted on the motor pole straight, otherwise your arc will be lopsided. Also make sure you are using valid transponders, and the motor does move when you change sats.

Also when you find 5W, make sure it is actually 5W, by comparing received channels, with transponder/satellite/channel info on lyngsat etc.

Even with a reallly badly setup motor, usually a few satellites at least can be picked up around where the alignment was done.
 
A photograph of the finished setup would help, also is there a particular reason why you have got a monobloc lnb as well as a motor and what is the degree of separation of the monobloc?
 
Hi

Thanks again for all the replies and help. I being new to all this purchased the monobloc because it said it was compatiable on the maplin website.

Again not realising the purpose of the monobloc (correct me if I am wrong) it can pick up more than one sat on a fixed dish, I suppose.

It is not therefore any good for a motorised setup. I have recently taken my old sky dish down and still have the dish and lnb. The sky lnb has four connections so I will use that. I will return the monobloc to maplin. I will try to take a picture of the setup.

As for what has been suggested to do. I will change the lnb to the sky one.

Set the motor back to 0, ensure all the USALS details are correct and then send the motor to 5W.

Point the dish at 5W and scan the channels, check the scan channels belong to 5W.

Then hope that if i pick a different sat maybe an east one that it will move and pick it up with USALS.

One last question that I am confused about concerning two points:


  1. Within the motor settings on the receiver when you put in the USALS details i.e. longitude and latitude. It asks something like weaker direction for two choices. One has a choice between North & South. The other has a choice between West and East. Could some clarify this?
  2. There is a setting to set LNB settings. When you go into it, it asks which sat you want to pick i.e. THOR 1 W, or a sat on 5W. Do you have to put the LNB settings to point to the default sat that will be used from the start. In my case I will be using 5W should I choose that.
One last thing :-worship should I also bring back the cheap sat finder I have been using to maplin when I bring back the monobloc lnb. Is there any alternative's that I should or should I stick with the cheap one if I verify that the channels on the sat are what I think they should be.

I am also worried by this post about the wall bracket for the maplin dish being to small or wrong I thought the one I had was on center. The link is:

http://www.satellites.co.uk/forums/...256-newbie-question-maplin-hd-kit-advice.html

Many thanks for all of your help
 
The Sky LNB will do for testing purposes, but a Sky lnb is designed for a Sky dish, and it won't allow the dish to perform as well as it should do.

If you need a quad, you should go for a non-sky one.

There is an explanation of longitude and latitude on wikipedia

_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude

The LNB settings would be set to whatever you wanted to pick up at that moment in time.


What wall bracket have you got?, if it came from Maplin, it most likely needs to go in the bin, and T+K brackets and pole puchased instead.
 
Hi and welcome to the forum..you should have the motor set at zero and turn the pole around the mount to find five west so 5w is your zero sat.Also it sounds like your not far away from getting the arc so just keep at it.Just be sure your mount is 100% plumb m8.I
 
5W isn't at his zero though, as his long it 6.3W. Though it won't make a great deal of difference on those tiny fortec star dishes.
 
Robbo said:
5W isn't at his zero though, as his long it 6.3W. Though it won't make a great deal of difference on those tiny fortec star dishes.
Click to expand...

you are correct Robbo...I didn't know there was a bird @ 6.3w
 
There is isn't of course. But the beauty of USALS/GotoX means that you can send the dish to 5W, the motor will move the appropriate 1.3 degrees eastward, and the dish can be aligned there. And then, when the motor is at zero the dish will point at an imaginary 6.3W satellite, i.e the top dead centre of the arc.
 
Hi again thanks for all the help

I just wanted to clarify something, so that when Usals drives the dish it does it in the correct direction.

Within the motor settings on the receiver when you put in the USALS details i.e. longitude and latitude. It asks something like weaker direction for two choices. One has a choice between North & South. The other has a choice between West and East. Could someone clarify this?

I.e should I choose south and east because that is the way I am facing. South is in front of the dish and east is to the left of the dish. These might be coolstream specfic.

Thanks again
 
Your latitude is north your longitude is west.
 
:):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):)

Just an update I took the excellent advice given by everyone who was kind enough to reply to my dump dump questions.

Result went and got a single LNB instead of the monoblock, as soon as I put the single LNB on was able to find 5W sat with the sat finder. Then scanned 5W successfully.

Then took the scary bit of scanning 1W and shook surprise it worked something like 700 channels. Moved each sat one by one some work some don't.

But the most westly that I could go was 30W and it worked with some 600 or 700 channels.

Have now started going eastward and picking up some and not others. If I can do it anyone can :):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):)

The coolstream box is very cool, next stop after getting all the east sats I can is a diablo card, just have to figure out how that works next.

Thanks to everyone who helped me out. If you have enough patience then it is easily done. Just stick with it.

I am a computer programmer so the diablo card should not be to difficult. I got the streamcool box as a hobby to learn linux and to hopefully contribute to the development of neutrino.

So getting the dish working was the hard bit for me, this is a very valueable forumn and you guys, keep up the good work. You don't realise the real help you give dump dumps like and everyone else.

I will try and response to posts in the future if I can.

Cheers
 
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