First time install -please help!!

[sullivbt]

Gents;

Just received a 76cm Winegard dish (thanks to Tom Taylor - fast, friendly and inexpensive: great job!!) that I hooked up to my Pansat 2300A. I assembled the dish and installed it outside on the same mast and arm that my previous Dish500 antenna was using (I reused this b/c I knew that that mast was plumb and vertical).

I aimed the dish using the following coordinates that I got for Telstar 5 from the SatFinder program: AZ 220.4, EL 41.7 and SK 23.1 (I am in Richmond, VA). I connected a nice thick 25' run of high quality RG6 (Radio Shack Gold quad shielded cable) to my reciever and went to the "Antenna Setup" screen on my reciever to set up the T5 bird. I set LNB Type to "Standard" (since I am using a standard LNB), the frequency to "10750", 22khZ to "Off", DiSEQ to "Off" and Skew to "23". The signal strength on the setup screen is showing 94% (almost maximum) but the signal quality is 0% - when I attempted a satellite scan, the reciever found nothing on T5!!.

So, what am I doing wrong?? Do I have the right settings for my receiver? How do I know if I am aiming correctly? I don't understand the "Skew" setting in the antenna setup screen in the receiver - if I manually rotated the LNB to 23 degrees (which I did), do I still need to set the Skew to 23 in the recevier? Did I turn the LNB in the right direction when setting the skew (when facing the dish, I turned the LNB clockwise until it was at approximately 23 degrees - should I have gone counter clockwise?)? if anybody can help guide me through this, it would be greatly appreciated. The receivers operators manual is almost worthless - it has a terminal case of Engrish. So, all y'all FTA experts, please weigh in with what you think I need to do to get this system up and running. Thanks!!

 

[sksatellite]

You are not at the satellite yet, signal strenght mean nothing, you need quality. Do you remember where the old Dish pointing at, just go back to the east a little bit by slowing move the dish. Do you has the TV and receiver at your side while you looking at the satellite ? this is the best way for DIY.

 

[sullivbt]

Thanks for the quick response. I am using the old "wife looks at TV and hollers the strenght reading while I move the dish" technique You say I need to go back to the east a little, but how much should I rotate the dish - I moved through an arc of what seemed to be about 5 or 6 degrees (from East to West) and the quality level never even flickered? IS there any way to tell if my elevation setting is correct?

 

[sksatellite]

You may need to adjust the elevation as well. one or two degree differ is common. Azimuth seems right. In the set up menu, try to turn the skew setting to 0 and see what happen.

 

[Mark_AR]

I don't recall from a few days ago, but I remember on one of the SATS, I had to switch to transponder 2. I don't think T5 was the one though.

Skew is a meaningless setting on the PANSAT setup screen with a Winegard. There isn't a mechanical polarizer to turn the LNB. The skew adjustment of the LNB should be done 'looking at' the dish with the LNB in front of you. turn it 23' counterclockwise. (roughly between 10 and 11 on the hands of a clock)

As 'sksatellite' suggests, it makes it a BUTTLOAD easier if you can have a small TV outside and just run a short RG6 to the PANSAT. You can then see if the Quality jumps or not. Sometimes just a nudge is all it takes. Maybe up, maybe down. The key is small increments.

I've got 75% Quality and 85 Strength on T5.

TP1: 12152 (H) 20.000 SR

 

[Mr Tony]

Signal doesnt mean anything...its quality that matters

key to remember is turn it 1/8" and wait a couple of seconds for it to come in.

 

[sullivbt]

Uh ohhh

All;

Thanks for everybodys response. I just realized that I set my skew by turning the LNB clockwise, not counter clockwise. D'oh!!!!! I'll try it correctly as soon as I get home from work. Thanks again.

Brian

 

[PSB]

One step at a time and you will get it, good luck tonight!

 

[sullivbt]

OK, rotated the LNB in the correct direction and I am now picking up T5 at a 40% quality level. So, the good news is that I am now picking up about 40 or so TV and radio stations on T5. However, there are a pretty good number of channels which the receiver found on T5 but that I really can't get good reception on (i.e. the picture is so bad [macroblocking and other digital artifacts] that they are unwatchable). I am assuming that this is because my signal quality is so low.

So, how can I get my signal quality up? My LNB appears to properly set, and my elevation appears to be properly set (when I move the dish up or down slightly the signal quality drops to 0%). Should I continue to try moving the dish from side from side slightly in order to increase the quality? It seems that whenever I do this my signal quality goes right to 0%, but maybe I am moving the dish too much. How much should I move the dish when I am trying to lock a signal in? Are there any other things I should check that could be making my signal quality so bad? Thanks to everybody who has responded for helping me out - you guys have made this install process (pretty) painless .

Brian

 

[Mark_AR]

What I did was to just grab the LNB arm and gently put pressure on it. Left, right, up, down to see which way it made a difference. S-L-O-W-L-Y

I've learned that pointing and patience go hand in hand.

One thing that did make a difference for me was the 'focal length'. The LNB mounting bracket on the arm is slotted. I loosened the 2 screws and slid it further away from the dish reflector.

When I assembled the dish, I also pushed the LNB as close to the dish as it would go in the bracket. This seemed to be wrong too. The further away I slid it in the bracket, the better signal I got. Now the feedhorn is directly against the bracket.

You have the major hurdle overcome. Consider everything from here 'fine tuning'.

 

[PSB]

All you can do is PEAK the signal the best you can, from behind the dish pull the reflector slightly to the left-right. up and down, while watching the quality, when you get it the best you can you then rotate the LNB slightly again to pull in as much signal, when you do this you are lining up your dish with the satellites position in the sky, the final thing you may want to try is to move the LNB closer then further away from the dish to get the exact focal point, if this does not help all you can do is get a bigger dish or a better LNB, a lot of programming cuts in and out if there is bad weather at their end of things and remember some channels are feeds and not TV channels as such and so think your self lucky when you do get them, glad to hear you got started! Lots more satellites up there : )

 

[sullivbt]

OK, I get it now. I was moving the dish with all of the bolts loosened (i.e. the dish was not "locked" into one position). So, when I was moving the dish, I was moving it like a quarter inch at a time - I thought that that was you guys meant by moving it slightly . So what I really need to do now is to tighten down all the mounting bolts on the dish to lock it into the position it is now (i.e. w/ 40% quality) then kind of just twist the dish form side to side to see if I can peak the quality level. Does that sound about right?

 

[sullivbt]

Forgot to mention - I have the LNB pulled all the way back to the mounting bracket (i.e. as far away from the dish as possible). Would moving it closer to the dish possibly make any differenc in the quality?

 

[WTguy]

Yes, do move the lnb in and out to find a peak level. Try adjusting the elevation and azimuth very slightly to see if you can get better quality. I usually get quality reading of 98 on IA5 (T5).

The bad news is not all the channels have good picture quality (sort of like computers, garbage in-garbage out). So some of what you are seeing cannot be improved.

Good luck and enjoy.

 

[sullivbt]

Still more questions

THanks to everybody who has answered so far; I would not have made it this far w/o you But, now that I am up and running on T5, I am very confused about what I am seeing. Hope somebody can help answer some of these quesitons for me.

1) I peaked the quality level at about 86% using TP12 of T5. However, I did not realize that quality level would vary by transponder - I assumed that if you got an 86% on one TP, then you would have 86% on all TP. Is there something wrong w/ my 2300A receiver? I mean, is this what I should be seeing (that is, different TP's having different quality levels)?

2) Assuming that the answer to question 1 is "yes", then is there an easy way to peak the signal for all TP's at once, w/o having to manually set the reciever to each individual TP and then adjust the dish? Is it possible that I could get the "perfect" alignment for the dish to get T5 and still not pick up all of the transponders?

3) In line w/ question 3, I now realize that my receiver is only "seeing" 19 transponders on T5 - I thought every bird had 24 TP's and according to Lyngsat, there is FTA stuff coming off of TP's numbered higher than 19 on T5. Yet TP19 is the highest numbered TP that my receiver says it is seeing. Am I misunderstanding something here, or do I still need to adjust my dish aiming?

4)To make matters worse, some of the channels that Lyngsat says are coming off of TP's that my receiver says I am not getting, I can actually view these channels! Is this common - I mean, are some of these channels broadcast on multiple TP's? Or am I just confused about what the hell is going on?

ANyway, hope somebody cna help me with this. Thanks a lot.

Brian

 

[Mr Tony]

THanks to everybody who has answered so far; I would not have made it this far w/o you But, now that I am up and running on T5, I am very confused about what I am seeing. Hope somebody can help answer some of these quesitons for me.

1) I peaked the quality level at about 86% using TP12 of T5. However, I did not realize that quality level would vary by transponder - I assumed that if you got an 86% on one TP, then you would have 86% on all TP. Is there something wrong w/ my 2300A receiver? I mean, is this what I should be seeing (that is, different TP's having different quality levels)?

quality levels vary due to power output. On G10, I have one TP at 99 quality and one at 75. As long as its more than 30, you'll keep a stable picture.

2) Assuming that the answer to question 1 is "yes", then is there an easy way to peak the signal for all TP's at once, w/o having to manually set the reciever to each individual TP and then adjust the dish? Is it possible that I could get the "perfect" alignment for the dish to get T5 and still not pick up all of the transponders?

answer one was no, so this one I'll pass

3) In line w/ question 3, I now realize that my receiver is only "seeing" 19 transponders on T5 - I thought every bird had 24 TP's and according to Lyngsat, there is FTA stuff coming off of TP's numbered higher than 19 on T5. Yet TP19 is the highest numbered TP that my receiver says it is seeing. Am I misunderstanding something here, or do I still need to adjust my dish aiming?

It varies. I can scan T6 and get more than 24 TP's at a time (especially during news events), but as an example, G3 (95) only has 7 or 8.

4)To make matters worse, some of the channels that Lyngsat says are coming off of TP's that my receiver says I am not getting, I can actually view these channels! Is this common - I mean, are some of these channels broadcast on multiple TP's? Or am I just confused about what the hell is going on?

ANyway, hope somebody cna help me with this. Thanks a lot.

Brian

yes. Lyngsat is accurate, but since the owner of the site cannot see our satellites, they rely on people letting them know what is going on in this part of the world

 

[sullivbt]

Thanks Iceberg. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't crazy. Man, my wife and I are having so much fun w/ just T5, I am beginning to wish I had bought a motor in the first place so I could check out all of the othyer birds

Brian

 

[Mr Tony]

you could also "go ghetto" and move it yourself

When I first started, I had a mast that had so many blck magic marker marks with "g3", "AMC9", G10" on the back

A motor is a real asset
(makes for easy moves when its -20 out)