Installing Dish at Vacation Home -- Quad LNB vs. Dual LNB

[hobo13]

Hi.

I'm having some technical difficulties installing a dish at my vacation home, where I'm currently at. I was hoping to get some advice from the experts around here. Here's my situation.

Main Home:
Dish 500 with Quad LNB
3 receivers connected (322, 508, no phone lines anywhere)
Boston locals

Vacation Home
Dish 500 with Dual (not Twin) LNB -- it has separate heads, so I assume it's the dual, not the Twin.
311 receiver, no phone line
Switch 21.
Ohio

I think I have the Dish pointed well. I aimed it by setting the Point Dish tool to 119, T19, and maximized the signal. It shows about 110 signal rating for ODDs and EVENs which seems good.

Then I switch over to 110. I get the ODD T's, but no EVENS. I've run Check Switch. It identifies the switch as a quad 500. That can't be right. I've done the front panel reset, the power off, reset to factory defaults, all without luck.

My cable run is about 12' from LNB to Switch, and about 80' from switch to receiver. I've shortened the receiver to 6' with the same results.

From what I've read on here, it seems that this setup is best when you match equipment at both homes -- is that my problem? Should I just get a quad LNB? But I've also read that missing the EVEN's usually means a cabling issue / connector issue. But all cable is new RG6.

So I'm at a loss here. If I get 119 ODDs/EVENs and 110 ODDs, does that mean my Dish is pointed correctly? What do I need to do to force it to recognize that switch? I've also swapped out that switch with another one, with the same results.

Thanks for any help.

 

[dodge]

odd evens

Sounds like you have a bad cable/ connector coming off the 110 lnb going to the switch 21, swap that cable out and see what happens with it,

 

[dodge]

no evens on 110

Also try swapping the 2 lnbs around and see what happens, then redo a check switch in the menu

 

[Liquidforce88]

Sounds like a bad cable on the 110 to me as well. Also before you do a check switch with the LNB connected to the receiver, do one without the receiver hooked up. This way it will clear the matrix and the receiver will start fresh.

 

[hobo13]

thanks for the help.

I'll take a look at the connectors / cables in the morning. they are all new cables though, so we'll see. the Dish and LNB's are used though (Ebay). I will also swap the LNB's, though I wouldn't have thought that would do anything.

so given no hardware failures, I'm assuming that I can have a quad at one location and a dual at another? at least no one has told me this won't work yet! Unless the signal coming from the birds tells the receiver what kind of switch it *ought* to be talking to, I agree, it shouldn't make a difference.

 

[oljim]

Is the LNB at home a DP quad ? is so run sw ck with cable unhooked. each time you move it from one place to the other

 

[SimpleSimon]

Oljim is probably on to something. When changing configurations, it's always a good idea to run at least one check switch with nothing connected.

 

[hobo13]

Thanks a lot guys!

The system is working!

Apparently, the problem was that I *thought* I had a dual LNB, but it turns out it was a quad. Yea, stupid mistake. So that's why the 311 identified the switch as a 500 quad, even with the SW21 in place. So removing the SW21 and connecting straight to the Quad solved the problem.

Thanks for everyone's comments.