Which Sat Dish to chose for FTA?

[Ferguson]

I am looking into recieving free-to-air satellite television. I have done a fair bit of research and my current location can recieve the following satellites:

ASTRA 1C
ASTRA 1D
ASTRA 1E
ASTRA 1F
ASTRA 1G
ASTRA 1H
ASTRA 1KR
ASTRA 2A
ASTRA 2B
ASTRA 2C
ASTRA 2D
EUTELSAT HOT BIRD 2
EUTELSAT HOT BIRD 6
EUTELSAT HOT BIRD 7A
EUTELSAT HOT BIRD 8
EUROBIRD 1

I believe an 80CM satellite dish should be suitable to recieve all of these satellites with a good signal. I plan to connect the satellite dish to a computer with a satellite PCI card in it. Could you give me a little more information into exactly what dish or any other accesories I would require? I believe to recieve all of these satellites I would need a dish with dual LNB's or even tri LNB's, could you confirm this?

Many thanks.

 

[Analoguesat]

an 80cm dish and 3 lnb's are required, plus some disecq switching.

prime focus on 13E (Hotbird 2, 6, 7A, 8)
first offset - 19E - (Astra 1E, 1F,1G,1H,1KR, 2C)
second offset - 28E - (Astra 2A, 2B 2D, Eurobird 1)

or a motorised system of course.

 

[Ferguson]

Thanks. Would you recommend any dish?

 

[Analoguesat]

Virtually any supplier for an 80cm will be suitable. Ive got a collection of scruffy battered old dishes from assorted locations which all work perfectly well after I had straightened them out (!)

 

[Ferguson]

Just looking at DiSEqC Switches now, there are loads about, but im not sure which to go for as there are so many cheap ones which lose quality. Would I need a shielded one? I do have another dish and two terrestrial ariels up there, so wouldn't want it to interfere.

 

[rolfw]

I would recommend a Raven Gemini 90cm with Eastern Sats offset bracket, gives a nice robust signal from all three satellites and most of all it is easy to set up.

 

[Ferguson]

I would recommend a Raven Gemini 90cm with Eastern Sats offset bracket

I'm looking for as small as possible dish for what I would like, so I think an 80CM is proberbly my limit size wise. This should be good enough to recieve those satellites shouldn't it? Are there any other satellies which are achieveable with an 80CM dish from UK? Because I wouldnt hesitate at adding another LNB if I could recieve from another sat.

 

[rolfw]

A Raven 90 cm doesn't look any bigger than your average 80cm dish, as it is horizontally eliptical.
You should be able to use an 80cm dish, in fact I've put up a few Raven 70cm dishes with offset bracket and achieved acceptable results, less robust on the signal though.

On the installation above, I used an Orbital DiseqC switch and found the design and performance very good, but have previously used Global.