Which LNB??

aadham

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Hi
What would be the best brand of Universal LNBs for my 1.8m motorised prime focus dish please?

I live in Jordan and there aren't too many good choices available at the local market.

Thanks

Ayman
 

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Is your dish prime focus (circular) or offset (egg shaped ) ?

Dont believe the noise figures, just coming back from Dubai and brouhg back a few of the popular brand names claiming 0.3 dB (Super California, Strong, JBS, Texsat, Eurastar) and they are all the usual 0.7dB in a different box. I couldn't complain about the pricing though - less than half of what one would pay here.

Only way is to take each one home and try it out. Make friends with your local satellite shop, tell him youre a journalist and doing a test of equipment, and he will get free promotion - its only half a lie as Im sure you will post the results on this site for all to see
 

aadham

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Thanks CH for the quick response :)

As I mentioned in the original post, my dish is "prime focus".

Currently I'm using an Universal KU LNB from a company called G-Guard.

It's doing a good job by enabling me to receive channels from nearly 29 birds so far. However, the problem is in the choppy reception of few channels from 13E and 19E.

Morover, there are some frequencies which I'm unable to receive from 19E such as (12168 V) despite that fact that I can receive the (12188 H) both of which belong to the same coverage map.

I'm not really after buying yet another LNB for just the heck of it. If it won't increase signal strength then I'll stick with what I have.

Best regards

Ayman
 

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The different polarisation can make all the difference in fringe areas (Horizontal much stonger than Vertical is common with a couple of satellites over here)

With a prime focus dish you have less choice in unicversal LNBs as there are fewer with a flange that will fit on the dedicated feed , however this gives you the advantage fo fitting a polariser (Mechanical) and a high stability full band LNB. Gardiner used to make a superb digital compatible unit with true figure of 0.5dB across the band.

No tone is needed from the receiver, you will however need to get a pulse output from somewhere and a 5V supply.

Otherwise its making a bracket fo the universal with feed, and hoping the F/D ratio of the dish is such that the illumination is satisfactory

Or move location

or

get a bigger dish

Do you have an old analogue receiver lying about ?
 

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There are Universal LNB's with the C120 flange, but they are hard to find in the UK, so I can't really comment.

As a rule an improvement in noise figure is only small, so you could spend a lot of cash for only a small improvement in reception.
 

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Can anyone vouch for the quality of any brand of low noise lnb? I need a little bit of a reception boost to capture various feeds on various satellites, which often seem to suffer from low signal quality readings rather than low signal strength.

I have noticed many suspiciously cheap 0.3 db ones on German e-bay, from brands such as Invacom and MTI, and ridiculously cheap Humax 0.5db lnb's. Has anyone had any experience with any of these?

Frazer
 

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Theyre all brand names, the source is always from an electronics sweat shop in the Far East

I have tried all the items brought back and they are all similar in performance, none perform as well as the last California Amplifier NOVA LNB (rated on the box as 0.5d:cool:

You are right though, there are very few flanged Universals on the market
 

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It's my opinion that the perfect set-up with an average LNB will always out-perform a not-so-good set-up with a so-called really low noise LNB and it's the set-up that that I've tended to concentrate on.

Jimbo
 

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Nothing beats a decent set up , but if Aadham has got the best out of his system already then it does look like a bigger dish maybe in order

Quite a few dishes can be improved by tweaking, I remmber a lot of Triax dishes could get a better signal by twisting the reflector surface, being of metal construction, they were quite often squashed in the box, howevr this occurred on too many at different times to be just transit damage. Then the Lenson Heath 80 which had a design fflaw for the first two years where the boom arm was a few mm to short in design.

LNBs also can be adapted by ensuring the feed is pointing at the centre part of the dish (before aligning it on the arc) and can make up the difference between no signal and clear pictures
 

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Sorry to butt in on Aadham's post, but what particular advice might you give to create a "perfect set up", apart from the suggestion about the lnb alignment? I am using an 80cm egg-shaped dish with a Nokia MM9902s and Satscan motor, and, as I mentioned above, seem to just lack a little on signal quality to pick up a few of the weaker feeds on Eutelsat W1, 2 and 3 and 12.5 West in particular.

And I do have an analogue receiver as well (as Aadham was asked above)- how might that be of use?

Thank you,

Frazer
 

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Hi Frazer

Very much as CH has said too, in my post about set-up I was referring to the various angles involved in setting up a dish and LNB. Such as elevation, azimuth, polarization adjustment and possibly skew. Tracking an arc by peaking on the Eastern and Western limits as well as due south. Dishes which track an arc in one plane will tend to lose signal strength and corection through offset adjustment can improve the signal. Well that's the theory as I understand it.

Jimbo
 

aadham

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Hi friends

First off, I must thank all of you who contributed to this thread. Your feedback was definitely a great help to me in determining what/how to improve of my setup.
To give you an idea on my setup components:

- 36v motorised, patched DY Telecom 3050CIP (Digital only) which appears to come from the same company which is manufacturing Technomate. It has been an excellent unit with no problems so far.

- G-Guard Universal LNB 0.6dB (?) which I'm planning to replace with a locally recommended one from a company called Smart (probably as CH stated comes from some sweatshop in the Far East).

- Samsung C-band LNBF

- Jonsa 1.8m solid dish with "KU-BAND Gain @12.5GHz at 46.76dB".

- 18" Jaeger actuator.

All of the above components except for the receiver unit is almost 6 years old.

With the above I'm able to receive most of the channels on -almost- all birds all the way from 30ºW to 78.5ºE.

I shall take CH's advise and go for a bigger dish. Thanks CH :)

However, I have two additional questions related to my future upgrade plan, and I hope I'm not breaking any forum rules by posting manufacturer's links

1- Would someone care to view and comment on this 2.4m dish ?

2- My C-band LNBF is fitted in a primitive form (I think). The technician has used a locally-made metal bracket next to the focal point, which -naturally- is creating different positions on my receiver for the same bird with C & KU bands (i.e. PAS10 @68.5ºE). Could I be directed as to how this could be corrected? I've tried several different technicians but to no avail.

I'm sorry for the lengthy post and my too many questions but I found you guys to be more helpful and informative than the satellite shops around here.

Thanks again friends and have a nice weekend :) .

Ayman
 

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Thank you Jimbo. I guess the best advice is to tinker a bit with my set up before taking a risk on an lnb that might be no more effective than the one I've got. Checking out my signals across a range of satellites, I have noticed that I'm getting better quality from Pas 43 West, than I am from the Sky satellite, (my west and east limits) which doesn't seem right somehow. So maybe there is scope for improvement. I have also noticed some of the difference between horizontal and vertical polarization that CH mentioned.

Incidentally, is CH's question about the analogue receiver anything to do with it being easier to successfully set up a system using the analogue signals rather than the digital?

Frazer
 

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I can answer the analogue receiver question Frazer, the nice thing about fine tuning using one of these is the variable picture quality.

To a greater extent, the digital picture is either there or not and once it is there you will see no tangible improvement even if the dish becomes better aligned. With an analogue receiver you can use various techniques to limit the input signal, a wet tea towel is one, thereby giving you a sparkly picture and you can then fine tune to get reid of the sparklies.

In the very early days of Sky digital, there were no digital meters available to the Sky installers, so I used to carry an old analogue box as well as the tone meter to tune to the one analogue test card they had purposely set up on the satellite.
 

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Jonsa

The one posted is a segmented dish which takes an incredible amunt of time to set up correctly, using fishing line and a boresight checker

Gain figures are good on paper but check those that were sent with the 1.8m, if they are greater than 3dB at the same frequency be a bit suspicious

Thay are cheap dishes, if its local then fine, dont import just one, it may get damaged as they are usually transported in bulk on pallets.
 

aadham

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Hi CH

It seems that Jonsa only manufacturers segmented dishes over 1.8m.

I shall buy it from the local market (as you said: cheap), I will not bother with importing it myself.

The only locally available alternative would be top brands like Orbitron with a price tag exceeding $500.

Many thanks for your responses.

Best wishes


Ayman

P.S. Do you go to DXB often?
 

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aadham

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DXB=Dubai (in airlines terms).
 

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Thanks Rolf for the knowledge. I guess the problem these days is that there aren't many analogue signals to test with- I don't think there are any on 28 East or 43 West which are my limits.

Frazer
 

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Just one additional point to add with dishes of all types and specifications for them.

Be very careful when they have a quote such as 48.50DB+- 1.0.DB

If it is truly a high quality supplier with high quality professional products then the tolerance in recieving signal properties should be within 0.2 db ( installer dependent also)and the gain effeciency should be around 65 to 80 % only the highest quality - miltary spec will approach the later.

The gain quoted for the 2.4 seems high when veiwed with the competitors.

both Astrotel and CA have quite a wide selection of LNB that could be used to good efect with your dish.

Incedently if you are prepared to invest a more money then a PLL (Phase locked loop) lnb will perform in general much better than a standard DRO lnb.


Segemented dishes 1.8 mtr upwards from several other suppliers can also be purchased from such has IRTE, Patriot and SMC etc.

Regards



Old Sateliite
 
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