Hello everybody! I've been researching my first FTA setup, and this site has been a valuable resource. A big "thank you" goes out to everyone that contributes here. For my setup, I was thinking I'd have two motorized 120cm dishes, one for Ku and the other for C-band, along with an AZBox receiver. I was looking through the pictures of the dish farms that everyone posted, and see that some people have both fixed position and motorized ones in their farm. I would also leave fixed position dishes pointed at certain birds, if it makes sense to do so. I wanted to compile a list of satellites that people leave a dish pointed to at all times. What is everyone's "Top 5 Full-time" satellites at which you'd leave a fixed position dish pointed? Thanks for your input!
Hello Jaytay,
You are fairly close (reasonably speaking) to me. I am NW of Omaha and due west of Blair, NE. I can help with answers regarding sats available to our area and especially if you are going to use an AZBox with a 1.2M dish for Ku band.
I am currently not using any fixed point dishes, all my sats are obtained from a 1.2 M GeosatPro dish with a DG-380 motor and the linear side of an Invacom QPH-031 LNBF. I get everything between 30.0°W (Hispasat) and 125.0°W (AMC 21)and go go further west to at least 148.0°W (I used to be able to view the open DN channels there until they turned them off).
I would say that at this time, the best satellites for fixed point dishes would be 30.0°W, 97.0°W and 125.0°W for sure. These sats provide the current bulk of Ku band FTA programming and since they are spaced so far apart, it would make sense to have them set up as fixed point dishes with switching arrays to select between them, rather than motorizing between them.
I don't surf channels from one sat to another very frequently. With my motorized dish, I dial into a sat and check what's on or I check the programming schedule ahead of time to make my decisions as to what to watch and that dictates which satellite I am going to park my motor at. Therefore, I don't find it too much af a hindrence to wait for the dish motor to locate the new sat if I change my mind and want to just see what's on. It is at most a minute to wait to change sats from 30.0°W to 125.0°W. You can get used to that delay pretty quickly. I thought I would totally despise and detest this delay, but it really isn't as bad as it seems. Often, I just skip from sat to sat in order as I make my way across the arc and check what is on each sat as I go. Therefore, it is usually just a few seconds between stops for me.
This leaves the big question regarding how it (your system) performs if you leave it parked on one sat and have a recording event schedule on another sat WAY on the other end of the arc - like going from 30.0°W to 125.0°W to make a recording and then going back to 30.0°W to record another program and doing this all in time.
With fixed point dishes and a switch matrix, obviously this is a moot point as it is an immediate switching action. How well does this work with a motor? Well, I have never run into much trouble here, but I have never had two back-to-back programs to test which were aired that closely in time (i.e. one ends at 6 PM and the other starts at 6 PM). I assume that you would have to forfeit at least 30 seconds maximum from each program. Well, it would actually result in 60 seconds loss at the end of one program
OR 60 seconds loss at the beginning of the other program since you cannot yet time things more precisely than in a minute-by-minute division schedule.
The above scenario should not be too bad to deal with since you have the program opening and closing trailers that you could lop off and not miss too much. And, as I mentioned, it is quite rare to find the programs so butted up against the time window in this this manner anyway.
My personal opinion is that you won't miss the immediate switching between the satellites if you opt for a motorized dish ONLY. Just remember that this whole system is your own and all your own! That is the great thing about FTA TV... You decide how YOU want it to be set up and YOU have the final word upon that! The only thing you cannot choose is what they offer in programming. Well, that is the detriment or drawback in FTA. You get what they offer (programming wise).
RADAR
