dish is in love with Echo 7...

[Watermonkey]

Hi all. I'm new here. The Gosatellite tech support guys told me to jump aboard and start brainstorming with ya'll to try and figure out what's wrong with the gear they sold me. I'm sure they're hoping it's operator error so they don't have to send me a new unit...

What I've got: Viewsat PVR 7000, 320 GB Hard Drive, 90mm Fortec dish with the STAB HH90 motor attached, Invacom Quad Polar LNB, SW41 switch. What's my problem? Well, I live just under 118W and I couldn't find Satmex 5 to save my life (I just noticed the list of "hot TPs" and I plan to put it to good use soon), but Echo 7 is a beacon in the night and right next door so I choose that as my reference bird. I can find many other DN birds as well all the way over to Nimiq 2 at 81 degrees (if I recall), but once the dish gets to its destination (it's good about responding to "go to" in the menu and it marches right on over), by the time I get upstairs to visually confirm it's actually on target and not lying to me, the motor is slowly pulsing, bringing the dish back to its reference. It does this with ALL other birds as well. I like the 81 degree example because, 1, I see good signal and quality on the screen, and, 2, it's far enough off 119 that I have time to run upstairs and visually see it moving back. I've got the most recent factory .pgm file loaded on it and everything seems to be set correctly due to the fact I can see 148 as well as 81. What is going on here? I'll post pics when I can...

 

[digiblur]

Hi all. I'm new here. The Gosatellite tech support guys told me to jump aboard and start brainstorming with ya'll to try and figure out what's wrong with the gear they sold me. I'm sure they're hoping it's operator error so they don't have to send me a new unit...

What I've got: Viewsat PVR 7000, 320 GB Hard Drive, 90mm Fortec dish with the STAB HH90 motor attached, SW41 switch. What's my problem? Well, I live just under 118W and I couldn't find Satmex 5 to save my life (I just noticed the list of "hot TPs" and I plan to put it to good use soon), but Echo 7 is a beacon in the night and right next door so I choose that as my reference bird. I can find many other DN birds as well all the way over to Nimiq 2 at 81 degrees (if I recall), but once the dish gets to its destination (it's good about responding to "go to" in the menu and it marches right on over), by the time I get upstairs to visually confirm it's actually on target and not lying to me, the motor is slowly pulsing, bringing the dish back to its reference. It does this with ALL other birds as well. I like the 81 degree example because, 1, I see good signal and quality on the screen, and, 2, it's far enough off 119 that I have time to run upstairs and visually see it moving back. I've got the most recent factory .pgm file loaded on it and everything seems to be set correctly due to the fact I can see 148 as well as 81. What is going on here? I'll post pics when I can...

what type of LNB do you have? and what channels/satellites are you hunting?

 

[Watermonkey]

I've got the Invacom Quad Polar with 40mm horn.

My goal is to receive all the FTA that's in my sky. Especially Galaxy birds since they seem loaded up with FTA content.

 

[concord]

If I understand, you can move to and get a signal on 82,91,110,119,148 (all the Bev/DN sats) with the circular portion of the (QPH-031/QPF-031)LNB, but you can't get any of the FTA sats with the linear portion of the LNB (such as SatMex5, G10R, etc).

Is this correct? Is the switch a DiSEqC (1.2 or 1.3) one?

 

[Mr Tony]

make sure you are set up on the L side of the LNB output

Also the LNB LO frequency is 10750

 

[Watermonkey]

To be honest, I've not been very motivated to try too hard with getting signal on the FTA sats since that would require the dish to actually stay at that focal point for some time. Again, the dish won't stay where I direct it, it goes to the point in the sky, but it immediately, for no apparent reason, slowely tracks back to the referance bird. I can't get it to actually stay at another bird for any length of time.

Iceberg, I'm using a sw-41 switch to combine "L" and "C" leads from the LNB to go to the receiver.

I will post pics very soon...

 

[techno935]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a SW-41 is only needed for Dish Network receivers. SW-41s aren't used on FTA. At least I haven't heard of it.

 

[Watermonkey]

Viewsat PVR 7000 Motorized Systems

On that page, you'll see exactly what I bought (package 6) which includes a 4x1 DiSEqC switch which says (I think) "sw-41" on the box. All of this is intended to bring in up to 4 satellite sources in to the receiver. I'm using it to bring in two sources at this point, from the "L" and "C" sides of the LNB.

 

[Mr Tony]

I would remove the switch and go directly to the L side. If you have the C & L side hooked up but in the menu's the diseqc not set up properly that can cause an issue

 

[Watermonkey]

And what would the proper setting be Ice? I've just got it set as "none" under the DiSEQC menu...

 

[Mr Tony]

when you remove the switch, then leave it at "none" until you get a few satellites dialed in. Then when you hook the switch back up, you set the diseqc on each satellite in the menus to what type of satellite it is

So if you hook a cable from the L side to port 1 of the switch and from the C side to port 2, then all the regular satellites would be set to diseqc 1 and the DBS slots would be diseqc 2. That way when you switch satellites the receiver knows which side of the LNB to pick

 

[Watermonkey]

intermittant results

I did as you suggested and just went straight through using the "L" side of the LNB and had some success for a while. I was able to gather channels from AMC3 and a couple others I think. Then, I installed the switch and dedicated the ports 2 for "C" and 3 for "L" and was having good luck with that as well. However, when I went to actually see the content on the channels (with and without the switch), the dish wouldn't move to the bird it needed to be pointed on. But it seemed to degrade after a while and even when I got the dish pointed to, say, Galaxy 10R, it'd only stay there for a moment and then it'd pulse right on back to the reference bird, Echo7 at 119W. I've spent way too many hours with this damn thing to have any patience left. I know I'm doing this right, the receiver must be faulty. And it's a little space heater. Shouldn't these things have a fan inside them to keep them cool?

No matter what I do, even if I get the dish to stay pointed at a FTA bird and not drift back, I'm still unable to view content, and inevitably, the dish drifts back to Echo7 every time.

 

[Tron]

Did it do this without the DiSEqC switch? I don't see how it could affect the motor that way, but maybe the switch is faulty? If your motor does not "pulse" when the switch is not there, I'd suspect that the culprit is the switch. What you describe is certainly not normal behavior.

Make sure you have your installation connected as follows:

LNBF -> switch -> motor -> receiver

 

[Watermonkey]

I have the installation complete as you indicated and the behavior did not change when testing without the switch.

 

[Tron]

I have the installation complete as you indicated and the behavior did not change when testing without the switch.

I would say there might be a problem with the motor, but considering you are using a Viewsat, chances are that the receiver is not operating the motor properly. Viewsats are notorious for buggy operation with motors.

 

[Watermonkey]

I think if I get another receiver somewhere down the road (after selling this one on eBay or something), I'm going to strongly consider the Captivewoks CW3000HD. Now that looks like a receiver I could deal with...

Here's a picture of the back of the antenna taken a few days ago. It's pointed at 101W at the moment I think, and the switch has been re-installed since this picture. (The L and C ports on the right side don't terminate anywhere, they're just hanging around. I didn't realize it'd be a problem to throw then at the switch too, since it has four ports and everything, but I guess it's just more then the receiver can handle, so they're flopping in the breeze while the other two do all the work.) I'm not sure because I've disconnected it until the problem can be resolved. I'm sure it'd be pointed at 119W by now if it was connected just like it is in this picture: