Viasat Xtra PL - South East England

[ez5]

I'm having issues picking up the Viasat Xtra channels, Viasat Xtra PL channels and the Viasat Football channels on 4.8e; getting a very low SNR. All the other Viasat and tv2 channels are fine, just those ones.

I've doubled checked all my frequencies and they seem correct, I just wondered what else might be the problem.

Thanks

 

[Burnham Beech]

No problem here at the moment on my ancient 10-15 year old dish/LNB set up.

 

[Lazarus]

I'm having issues picking up the Viasat Xtra channels, Viasat Xtra PL channels and the Viasat Football channels on 4.8e; getting a very low SNR. All the other Viasat and tv2 channels are fine, just those ones.

I've doubled checked all my frequencies and they seem correct, I just wondered what else might be the problem.

Thanks

No dish size given .......................

 

[ez5]

It's a 1.2m dish and I'm using a technomate tm-500 super.

I'm new to this so please excuse my ignorance.

 

[Lazarus]

Fixed dish?

Motorised dish?

Self- installed?

Brand?

LNB type?

How long have you had it?

Is the problem new - ie Has it worked prop[erly in the past?

You really need to give us enough information to go on!

 

[ez5]

It's a triax motorised dish with a technomate tm-1 universal single lnb. I hope that's correct - I went out and read it off the label :/

We've never subscribed to Viasat before so I never checked the signal strength before. The dish was professionally installed around 3 years ago however we recently started getting a poor signal on a few fta channels on turksat (but still watchable) and when I called the engineer he said the dish might be 'slipping' and as a short-term fix he gave me instructions to make subtle changes to the USALS, which worked.

I've tried the above but no luck. I'm not even getting a picture let alone a watchable picture - although a bit of audio breaks throught now and again on 1 of the Viasat football channels.

 

[Lazarus]

Ok.

The changes to USALS Longitude are a short term palliative for when the dish has slipped out of kilter by a relatively small amount. I do that too, on occasion.

BUT, the fact that you are getting inefficient performance despite the twiddles points to a need to reinstate the proper Longitude in USALS then go and physically correct the error in alignment (certainly in Azimuth and possibly also in Elevation).

The misalignment will be pretty small - maybe less than a degree - and if access is safe and you feel confident, it should be a relatively simple task to make the correction yourself. As it will have occured due to wind pressure causing slippage around the mount, you might be able to force it back into position without slackening anything off at all. Once happy, do apply a bit more tightening effort, though. Just had to do exactly this with my 1.1m after the fierce winds up here earlier in the week.

Three years of operation with a 1.2m receiving no physical attention is really quite good going, especially given the extreme weather we seem to get these days!

 

[Robbo]

Triax don't do 1.2m dishes ASAIK , possibly a TD110, which is a 1m dish. Go to the weaker transponder, and try tweaking the dish with the motor via the receiver to see if you can get an improved signal quality. If no good, try an Inverto black Ultra LNB and maybe the dish needs to tweaked outside too. A TD110 and black ultra should get those channels,

 

[ez5]

Thanks for both your help. I'll see what I can do but as above, I'm new to this so don't want to try too much and mess everything up.

 

[aceb]

Is that 11747V? If it is it's strong in this part of the SE on my 1m dish. FWIW it shows 88/100 S/Q or -36dBm or 10.6dB SNR. Whereabouts in the SE are you?

 

[ez5]

Yea, it's 11747v. I'm in Canterbury in Kent and getting less than 20 snr.

 

[ez5]

Ok, small update. I didn't try any of the above suggestions yet however I switched it on late afternoon/early evening yesterday and they were all working fine. I tried again late at night and fine again. However I put it on 5 minutes ago and the same channels aren't receving a signal again.

I noticed somebody mention in another thread that they're experiencing a weaker signal after 5pm. I appear to be getting the opposite :/

 

[Lazarus]

It's still suggestive of a very slight misalignment.

Propagation varies during the day, as you know - so if the incoming signal dips a tiny bit when your alignment is at or near the digital cliff, the effect will be apparent.

 

[martinuk]

Is it far south you go weaker signal in midlands viasat with pl extra are fine in kinds of weather on a 1m dish
if i was you mate id try black ultra lnb

 

[Lazarus]

Well that's fair comment, Martin - but he needs to get the misalignment sorted out first: We know there is one because of the need to tweak USALS Longitude mentioned at the beginning of the Thread.

 

[ez5]

Cheers for the advice guys. I'm slightly hesitant to go out and start moving the dish about in case I lose everything. I might ask our engineer to pop over next time he's in the area.