Minneapolis MN FTA...need help

[mahmoodkhan]

Hi there. I live in Minneapolis MN and wondering if someone can help me on how to setup my FTA receiver/dish. I have a Samsung DSB-4700F receiver, SG2100 motor and a 39" satellite dish.

I have the motor latitude set at 45degrees for Minneapolis, the dish is at an angle of 23degrees. The motor and dish are pointing towards South. My receiver shows signal strength at 30% regardless of which satellite I choose from the menu and the signal quality is 0.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you

Mahmood

 

[Mr Tony]

welcome from another Twin Citian

You have the dish and motor settings right so thats a good start. Our true south satellite is IA6 (Telstar 6 now called Galaxy 26)

Now I'm looking at my Samsung box right now. I never hooked it to a motor so some of this may be different and we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Lets get your true south locked first. What kind of LNB do you have? Are there any numbers on it?

In the menu settings
-Go to LNB settings (1st one)
-scroll to "Telstar 6K 93.0W"..that is the satellite you want
-Now depending on your LNB the LNB upper & lower may stay at 10750 if it shows on the LNB. If its a UNiverdsal, then change the lower LO to 9750 and the upper to 10600. 22k should be auto and the rest should stay as is

press OK to save it
scroll down to "manual scan" and hit OK....scroll until you find "Telstar6K"

The 1st transponder on there will say
Transponder-1/33
frequency-11708
symbol-14321
FEC-3/4
polarity-V

That is the transponder you want. Aim the dish dead south and SLOWLY move it east (if behind the dish it would be to the left). If you visualize a clock, dead south is 6:00. If you go past 4:30 you went too far. You might have to move it west but normally Telstar 6 is at about 5:30 (just a smidge off dead centre). Once you see the quality bar move then its locked on T6. You might have to adjust the elevation on the dish a smidge if need be. Dont touch the elevation on the motor.

 

[mahmoodkhan]

Thank you for your reply. This still didnt work, I am thinking now that maybe the motor/dish is not pointing true south. Since I am a complete newbie at this, what I did was take my compass and align the dish to point South. If the dish is facing south and the motor/dish angles are correctly set, should I be getting a strong signal strength and signal quality for Telstar 6 (93W) ? I am not sure what LNB I have, will check it out tomorrow. I adjusted the LNB to skew at 0 degrees.

Another strange thing that happened now is that when I chose Telstar6 in the first menu setting with the LNB settings, it reverts back to IntelAmer5C.

Thanks

 

[Mr Tony]

Thank you for your reply. This still didnt work, I am thinking now that maybe the motor/dish is not pointing true south. Since I am a complete newbie at this, what I did was take my compass and align the dish to point South. If the dish is facing south and the motor/dish angles are correctly set, should I be getting a strong signal strength and signal quality for Telstar 6 (93W) ? I am not sure what LNB I have, will check it out tomorrow. I adjusted the LNB to skew at 0 degrees.

You have to take magnetic deviation into play which hewre is -4 or so so you have to aim it a little off dead south. But the LNB type will make a difference if it isnt set up right

Another strange thing that happened now is that when I chose Telstar6 in the first menu setting with the LNB settings, it reverts back to IntelAmer5C.

Thanks

after you saved it? yeah it does that for some odd reason

 

[mahmoodkhan]

I will definitely check out the LNB tomorrow and follow up with you. A local installer had set this up for me on the side of my garage but when I found out about motors and possibility of getting a lot more channels I moved the dish to the top of the garage and now all the IntelAmer5c channels are lost. I have misplaced the phone number for the installer But I will keep trying this until I learn how to do this.

Thanks

 

[iafirebuff]

http://www.psbsatellite.com/ does installs in the Twin Cities if you are in need

 

[mahmoodkhan]

http://www.psbsatellite.com/ does installs in the Twin Cities if you are in need

Thank you!! Appreciate the info!

 

[iafirebuff]

Good luck!

 

[mahmoodkhan]

Hi again. Ok so after all this rain here in the twin cities, I finally went up to align my dish early in the morning today. I have the motor LATITUDE at 45degrees, the dish, motor is pointing approximately between 178-179degrees azimuth. The dish elevation is approximately 28degrees. The LNB skew is at 0 with the coax cable hanging down vertical at 90degrees and the details of my LNB are:

Ariza technology inc
Model: ER-783L
Digital ready Standard KU Band Single LNB RF 11.70/12.20 ghz
High 950/1450mhz
LO 10.750 ghz
GAIN 55db
NOISE 0.5

In my Samsung DSB-4700F receiver I am able to get channels from IntelAmer5K satellite. The signal strength today with the cloudy weather came in at 84% and the signal quality is around 39-52%, is the quality usually this low? I have hooked up a 2GHZ In Line Amplifier (40-2250MHZ) to the lnb.

For Telstar6 (93W) I get a signal strength between 30-46% but no quality and no channels are scanned.

Any suggestions on what I should be aligning so I can get channels from a lot of satellites?

Thanks

Mahmood

 

[DiscoLoveGrapes]

Hey there, I'm up in Columbia Heights (Iceberg is right, there are a few Minnesotans around these parts).

First off, congrats on getting a signal on Ia5/G25! You levels will be low today, since it looks like we're in for rain for a little while. However, even in the rain last night, I was getting most of Ia5 without a problem, and I've only got a 31" dish.

Personally, I'd do three things.

1) Remove the line-amp and see what happens to what you already have. I haven't heard too many good things about them, except that you can expect to have noise amplified as well as signal. Like I said, I've got a much smaller dish and I can get everything on Ia5 (except in bad weather) and almost everything else others mention here.

2) If your box is set up correctly for lattitude and longitude, and is seeing 97 West (aka IntelAmer5K, Ia 5, or G25 -- these silly things change names way too often), pick a weaker channel. Then go out to the dish and, with someone inside on the phone watching the signal quality, very gently press the dish on the corners too see if the signal raises. If it does, make the small adjustments. For me, this was the difference between getting an inconsistent signal and getting a signal to jump from 39% to 74%.

3) For Telstar 6 at 97 West (or Ia6, or G26), try to get the stations on this transponder first:

12076 Vertical
8681 Symbol Rate

It's two Mexican stations that usually come in very strong on my Fortec.

I hope this helps!

 

[mahmoodkhan]

Hey there, I'm up in Columbia Heights (Iceberg is right, there are a few Minnesotans around these parts).

First off, congrats on getting a signal on Ia5/G25! You levels will be low today, since it looks like we're in for rain for a little while. However, even in the rain last night, I was getting most of Ia5 without a problem, and I've only got a 31" dish.

Personally, I'd do three things.

1) Remove the line-amp and see what happens to what you already have. I haven't heard too many good things about them, except that you can expect to have noise amplified as well as signal. Like I said, I've got a much smaller dish and I can get everything on Ia5 (except in bad weather) and almost everything else others mention here.

2) If your box is set up correctly for lattitude and longitude, and is seeing 97 West (aka IntelAmer5K, Ia 5, or G25 -- these silly things change names way too often), pick a weaker channel. Then go out to the dish and, with someone inside on the phone watching the signal quality, very gently press the dish on the corners too see if the signal raises. If it does, make the small adjustments. For me, this was the difference between getting an inconsistent signal and getting a signal to jump from 39% to 74%.

3) For Telstar 6 at 97 West (or Ia6, or G26), try to get the stations on this transponder first:

12076 Vertical
8681 Symbol Rate

It's two Mexican stations that usually come in very strong on my Fortec.

I hope this helps!

Hi there. I have not been up on the roof yet, probably after this snowstorm we are supposed to get today. I tried the Telstar6 with above frequencies by typing them in under Telstar6 (Manual Scanning) and nothing is found. I have manually scanned all satellites listed in my receiver and only intelamer5k is detected. I am also unable to change the LNB setting to a different satellite such as Telstar6, it keeps defualting to the satellites that are found such as Intelamer5k. Could this be because maybe my satellite is not facing true south with the motor at 0degrees ? or do i need a different kind of LNB than the one I have mentioned above?

Thank you

 

[mahmoodkhan]

I went up on the roof today to try and aim the satellite and motor to true south (93W, Telstar6). My dish is at an elevation of 23degrees, motor latitude at 45 degrees and the satellite pointing at 181.6 degrees. Didnt get any signal, but by randomly adjusting the azimuth from that point i was able to get 45% signal quality for just a second or two and couldnt get it back after an hours worth of trying. What azimuth angle should i be pointing to get true south? This is so difficult....

I ended up changing the satellite to IntelAmer5k (97W), why is this satellite found so easily compared to Telstar6 (93W).

Please help.......

Thanks

 

[Mr Tony]

Telstar 6 is a smidge east of dead south here in Mpls so you would aim at 178 or so, not 182

also make sure you have an active frequency when aiming the dish

 

[mahmoodkhan]

Telstar 6 is a smidge east of dead south here in Mpls so you would aim at 178 or so, not 182

also make sure you have an active frequency when aiming the dish

Finally!!! I went up to align the dish today. Took a small portable tv along with the receiver. By randomly adjusting slowly I now am receiving 93W-Telstar6. Only pick up two signals on it. The strangest thing was that when I would aim the satellite to IntelAmer5k (97W), the dish would move all the way to the west instead of the actual position which is only a few degrees off from 93W. Same thing is happening for all other satellites in the reciever list with dish moving way offcourse from where it should stop.

In order to get the channels on 97W, i went to positioner setting, intelamer5k (97W) and then using USER MODE, manually moved the satellite one degree at a time until i could see signal quality. Does this mean that my satellite receiver factory settings are incorrect for the satellites? How do i fix this?

I am thinking about getting a different receiver, is there an HD FTA receiver with DVR so I can record shows on the hard drive and also with blind scan?

Thanks for all your help.

 

[ftageek]

Did you enter your latitude and longitude in your receiver first before moving to 97W? In order for the motor to track properly you must enter your location before moving the dish

 

[mahmoodkhan]

Did you enter your latitude and longitude in your receiver first before moving to 97W? In order for the motor to track properly you must enter your location before moving the dish

Hmm, actually I didnt input the latitude and longitude, not sure where the option to enter that is on a Samsung DSB-4700 ? If I go to positioner setting, select Telstar6 (93W) and then user mode, there is an option to calculate Satellite Position, not sure if the receiver would accept this to be the TrueSouth satellite from which to calculate distance to other satellites?

Thanks

 

[DiscoLoveGrapes]

I don't know your machine, but I'd strongly recommend entering our Latitude and Longitude (93 West, 45 North for our part of the Twin Cities). It may be quite helpful.

 

[mahmoodkhan]

I don't know your machine, but I'd strongly recommend entering our Latitude and Longitude (93 West, 45 North for our part of the Twin Cities). It may be quite helpful.

I will work on this today after work and see if there is an option to input the latitude and longitude. I did end up picking the two spanish stations which you had initially suggested, they come in pretty strong.

Thanks for all your help.