6' dish for AMC1 tp2, anyone successful?

[emuman100]

Hello,

I'm just not sure as to what could be my problem. I use Chaparral Dual Feed feedhorn and Norsat 8530 LNB with a Fortec Star 180cm dish. All I want is DW-TV and DW Radio on AMC1. There isn't much else on the vertical side of AMC1 except the SES American mux and Digicipher II channels. With my visionsat IV-200, I get from 43 to 50 percent quality with DW-TV. On sunny days it's pretty steady between 45 and 50 percent, on bad days I get some pixelating, not much. On good days it's clear. At the same time on my Motorola DSR-4410 DCII IRD, I get around 70 percent quality, no blocking at all, but also no sound, as for some reason in DVB mode on the DSR-4410, it won't find the audio PID to lock onto and I can't manually set it. It does have sound when I tune to 3940MHz, VCT is 253, VC is 255 for CN8, which is in the clear. In DCII mode sound works fine.

But, back to my main question. Has anyone with a 6 foot dish been able to reliably receive DW-TV on AMC1 with no blocking or cutting out at all? Is such a feat possible? I aligned the dish as best as possible, adjusted the focus and skew to the strongest signal I could get. Are my attempts in vein? I hate to order the 240CM Fortec Star because I am not sure what I'd do with the one I already have. I know that would probably solve my problems, but is there any way with a 6 foot dish?

Thanks.

Jonathan

 

[Mr Tony]

Yes it is possible. I use to have my 6 foot fortec dish at AMC1. The issue is that transponder has 7/8 FEC which means in Lehman's terms you need a balls on aimed dish. When working with a smaller dish there is little to no room for error. The FEC corrects the errors that the signal makes. Most FTA channels use 3/4 FEC so there is more room for error.

You might have to get a 8 footer. But I would try and tweak the signal to the best you can with what you have now. Every quality point counts

 

[turbosat]

jonathon, I have a 7.5 pointed at AMC6 (until Wednesday when the shuttle lands anyway) after that I will point it down to AMC1 and see what kind of pic I get on DW for you.
I plan on moving that dish soon also, so I'll have a free pole, then I'll stick this 5' cband back up just for grins and see what it does too, when I have time to try the experiment I'll let you know. Seems like a 6footer should get you a decent lock,with a good lnb.

 

[emuman100]

Iceberg,


Here is the thing. I have a Motorola DSR-4410, and when I configure it for the SES Americom mux on transponder 2, it gets a quality of 67 with no pixelating on DW-TV. On my Visionsat IV-200, I get a quality that goes from 45 to 50 percent with pixelating every now and then, but pretty good. I believe I have it basically spot on, or should I have a higher signal quality? I hear a Fortec Mercury II is a great IRD, you think I'll have better luck with that?

turbosat,

I don't blame you, I'd point my dish to AMC6 for NASA TV too, but I'd hate to throw all my hard work and aggravation out of whack. When you do it I'll be interested because if nothing works on the 180cm Fortec I might just get the 240cm. BTW, I'm using a Norsat 8530 LNB and a Chaparral Dual Feed.

Thanks.

Jonathan

 

[photoman76]

I have a Digitrans DTE-7150. The DW TV channel has two audio pids. I can hear sound on the Dolby AC-3 pid, but not on the Musicam pid. For some reason Musicam audio has problems on my receiver. The DW TV video is solid here on a 7 1/2 foot dish.

 

[emuman100]

photoman76,

What is your signal quality? And have you noticed the transponder going out at all? Yesterday, I lost signal for about 4 hours or so. At first I thought it was my setup. No matter what I did I could not get anything on transponder 2. So, instead, I adjusted the azimuth and skew for the best quality on the "Comcast Sports Net AMC1" transponder, at 3910MHz. The best I could get was about 43 percent. So, when the "SES Americom Digital-C" transponder came back, which is transponder 2, I got a quality of 50 percent and better. Perfect picture. I suppose all this time my azimuth was off slightly when I installed the new Chaparral feedhorn and Norsat LNB. I just need to wait for bad weather conditions to see if it holds up at all. I'm not sure if the outage was because of the clouds or it just went out because there was some sort of outage. It was strange to lose all signal like that.

Thanks.

Jonathan

 

[photoman76]

I didn't watch for long and I didn't notice the signal quality, but there was no breakup or outage. I think you're problem is that the 6 foot dish is marginal for the signal. If everything isn't perfect, you lose the signal.

 

[emuman100]

I think I got it as good as I'll get it. On my Visionsat, it only pixelates slightly in really thick clouds, other than that I get a stable picture. I plan on using one or two DVB IRDs with ASI out and connecting that to a QAM modulator. This way I'll have the same transport stream I get from the receiver on a QAM modulated channel that can be split a lot easier, and just use ATSC/QAM tuners at every TV or radio.

Thanks.

Jonathan

 

[truckracer]

that 7/8 fec tp is going to be a little low on a smaller reflector. The dual feed horn hurts a little bit sometimes unless you have it peaked on the c-band side. I have a bsc-621 that is less than stellar. It does almost as good as a corotor but not quite.