Turksat 42 deg in SW London prob.

somebodyelse

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Hi - I have a motorised dish, which is largely overkill as I now only want to receive one satellite - Turksat 42 deg E. The dish is 90 cm wide, and I'm located in SW London.

Setting the dish to scan all available satellites I can receive, I usually find:-
Hispasat 30 deg W
Nilesat 7.0 deg W
Hotbird 13 deg E
Astra 19.2 deg E
Astra 1D 31.3 deg E

That (to me) indicates I've got the arc about right.

If I set the antenna to where 42 deg E should be, I can detect an increase in signal strength, and using a meter have peaked it up, but still can't lock on to a signal.
The actual channels I want are the Georgian free channels, and looking at Rustavi2's footprint map here h**p://www.rustavi2.com/news/includes/satelite.php it indicates a 120cm dish is needed for the whole of the UK.
Am I flogging a dead horse with a 90cm dish - would I likely need to get a bigger dish and then it would resolve the signal?

As another allied question, the receiver is a Digital 1200M (CI), which used to accept on-air updates from Sky, but now fails to download the software. Is it likely that for an older receiver, the on-air software has been discontinued? I have found a download of a program called PCLink 2.5 which seems to be a software upgrade - (mentioned by someone a few years back) - anyone know if it's ok to use?
 

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Welcome to the forum somebodyelse

You do not say what type of mounting you have, is it H - H or polar mount.
When receiving your due south satellite, is your LNB completely vertical, if not then if you make it vertical it will be at the correct orientation regardless of the type of mount at any position on the arc. I suspect based upon what you say you can receive it is most likely a fine tuning issue however there are a couple of alternatives as shown in this diagram

As regards your stb, I have never heard of it and I doubt sky UK would support a non recommended stb however you may have been receiving updates from 19.2 East 13East. but certainly not from 28.2 East

90cm dish should be OK for the S1 beam according to lyngsat as shown here

BTW attached is a pdf user manual for your stb which explains some of the details you enquired upon and yes it was 19.2 East the downloads came from
 

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somebodyelse

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Thanks for the prompt response - that manual is very informative.
Today I had another shot at peaking things up, and noticed a variable I've not played with before - the LNB housing. That has perhaps 2 cm of adjustment, bring the lnb towards and away from the centre of focus. Is it worth finicking with that, or is it the case that, if it's receiving a signal, it's doing fine?
AFAIK it's vertical - spirit level used, and also plumb line with a bit of blue tac.
 

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A 90cm dish as Topper says, should be OK for the S1 beam, but can you receive the stronger channels on 42 East?
 

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No, can't receive anything except an increased signal strength. Have tried both H&V each time.
 

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Well you must not be on the satellite, or something is in the line of sight.
 

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If you cannot get the satellites near the centre of the arc (Atlantic 5 West, Intelsat/Thor 1 West or Sirius 5 East for example), then it looks as though your declination and / or elevation has not been set correctly. The Turksat satellite will therefore be off the arc you have set.
 

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Ah yes, didn't really pay much attention to the satellite list, the centre arc satellites are conspicuous by their absence.
 

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Hence too much or too little declination as per the last item in the picture I posted
 

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OK, thanks for the pointers, you're right: the centre satellites are missing.
Tomorrow I'm going to play again.

Sorry to be a pain, but what about the clamp holding the LNB? I can slide that back and forth a bit - is adjustment there normally necessary, or is it a case of, 'if it works then it's ok'?
 

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That will be one of the final adjustments, but if you have the angle on the motor set correctly for your latitude and the mast is vertical, then finding Thor at the centre of the arc will give you the whole arc.
 

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Hello again. Have spent two days playing with antenna, and decided that I had cracked the problem. This may be a bit tedious in explanation, but I'd like to try and make sure I've covered everything.
The dish is a 90cm 'no-name', the motor is a DiSEqC Geo-track H120, and I'm in SW London, lat 51.384, and the mounting pole is as vertical as I can get it

The Motor handbook specifies for latitude 51 Elevation angle of 39 degrees and declination angle of 7.385 degrees.

The motor is set for 39 degrees, and according to the motor handbook, the declination should be (40 degrees minus declination angle of 7.385), thus dish declination should be set to 32.615. This is where it all starts to misfire.

All the photos of dishes I've seen, they hang from a top bolt, and there is a curving scale lower down with a second bolt. Push the dish back and forward to get the setting you need (32.615 deg?) and then carry on setup.

My dish is different: it pivots on the lower bolt and the curved scale is above it. For that reason, I suspected I'd got part of the assembly upside down, but I'm sure its right.

Remember earlier I had a few satellites resolved? Well, the dish was "vertical-ish" to get those, and now, with a dialled-up angle of 32.615 the LNB was pointing much higher. So, set the antenna to look due south, connected meter and then adjusted the angle of the dish. With it at about 7 degrees declination, I tuned in Thor. Peaked up the dish angle, went east and west and got the best signal.

Following that, spent some time playing with the 0degrees setting of the motor. Kept adjusting the base 0 degrees setting, so that now, if I go to the zero DiSEqC point, then Thor is just a touch to the right of that.
For that reason, I am fairly confident that:-
Zero degrees is accurate
The dish elevation of 39 degrees is accurate

Unfortunately, searching satellites, the only other one I can find as well as Thor is Astra2.

I suspect my problems stem from not knowing the correct angle the dish should be set to and hope that any of you that recognise the type of dish as shown in the attached photo, can give me an idea of proper settings. FYI the dish is this one _http://www.bc-sat.com/pdishs3x.html

Comments very much appreciated.
 

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somebodyelse

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No further ideas? No-one know the angle I should set the dish to? Help appreciated still...
 

rolfw

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If you use the procedure laid out in my guide to Setup Guide for DiseqC Motor then the angle of the dish bracket is almost immaterial, as you find Thor by using the receiver meter, I don't trust scales on dishes sufficiently to base the setup of a system on them.

Not sure what your Longitude is, but if it isn't dead on 1W and your motor is USALs/GoToX caompatible, then send the motor to 1W, then find it manually.

PS. Looks like the dish is a botched version of the Triax sliding mount, but with a standard bracket attached, as the degree scale is on the top, there is only one way it can go, but it is an odd way of doing it.
 

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Thanks for that - I'm in the process of stripping the system right back to basics, to check everything. I'll surely report back if I get problems, but think I've got the hang of it (theoretically at least). Thanks for your patience.
 
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