My New FTA System is on the Way...Questions about SG2100 Alignment & USALS

[IA6Newspath]

Thanks for your replies, Iceberg and drhydro. I just finished browsing through the 3500's manual and am going to set up the dish and receiver again and try to hit a few more satellites. It seems to me that some of the descriptions and instructions in the manual were lost in translation to english. As such, I don't really understand the difference between the satellite scan, TP scan, network scan, advanced scan, and smart search scanning methods, so I'd really appreciate if someone might be able to give a very brief description of each of these different scanning methods. Thanks!

 

[PSB]

TP. scan scans all Transponders on chosen satellite.

Network scan (Don't use).

Advanced scan lets change the pids of the TP. you intend to scan.

Smart scan is like BLIND SCAN, it scans all TP.s all polarities and all Symbol Rates of the chosen satellite.

 

[IA6Newspath]

Thanks, PSB. I guess I'm still a little unclear on the TP scan. When you say "Transponders on chosen satellite", are you referring to the memory channels stored in the receiver for a particular satellite? And if so, then in what way are active and inactive channels differentiated?

Thanks!

 

[PSB]

Yes, in a TP. scan it scans all TP.s stored in memory for that satellite. Inactive TP's are passed by and only the active ones are added to your list of channels!

 

[voomvoom]

Yes, in a TP. scan it scans all TP.s stored in memory for that satellite. Inactive TP's are passed by and only the active ones are added to your list of channels!

Pete, on the Pansat the TP scan will scan only 1 transponder. It will show a list of all TP's, but will only scan the highlighted one. What it's good for is first going into Edit TP/ Satellite and enter a new TP, then going to TP Scan and doing a scan of that TP. Like when someone lets you know of a new channel or you see it on lyngsat or you did a scan and it didn't appear and you're sure it's there, just enter the TP in Edit TP and scan it in TP Scan. Simple enough.

Al

Edit: I've never used it, but I think the Satellite Scan does what you are saying Pete.

 

[Mr Tony]

I screwed up. DrHydro was rigfht. It is the "sig" button to get the signal on screen

-Satellite scan scans all stored Tp's for a satellite. It shows scrambled and FTA channels
-TP scan only scans one transponder (think of this as manual scan)
-Advanced scan allows you to input PIDS. You select a TP and enter the PIDS (very rarely used)
-Smart Scan is blind scan
-Network scan finds frequencies with same symbol rate (mainly works in Europe and on DBS slots)

 

[IA6Newspath]

Thanks to everyone for the continued help and support! I've now been tinkering with my dish for a couple of hours, and in addition to my true south satellite, AMC 3, which I also hit yesterday, I've been working my way west across the arc and have successfully hit IA 8, Galaxy 11, IA 6, Galaxy 3C, and most recently IA 5. Fortunately, I'm in the section of the Clarke Belt which is fairly flat, so I've been able to hit all of these satellites simply by adjusting my azimuth and without having to adjust elevation and polarity. Granted, if I were looking to peak on these satellites I would probably need to make some sort of skew adjustment, but I'm still getting 40% - 50% signal strengths which are more than enough to lock onto a signal.

The Pansat 3500's various scanning options are making much more sense to me now that I've been working with the receiver a bit more and have read through the help posted in this thread. I think what was partially throwing me off was Pansat's use of the term "transponder" to refer to memory channels stored for a particular satellite. When I thought of "transponder", I had in mind the literal meaning of the word, as in "AMC 5 has a total of sixteen 54 MHz Ku transponders". Now that I realize how Pansat has used the term in its receiver, it's making a lot more sense.

I touched on this question a little earlier in the thread, but now that I understand the receiver a little better, I thought it might be worth trying to re-word the question. Let's say that prior to trying to aim the dish at a satellite, I have a known channel that I would like to enter as a guide for signal quality while adjusting the dish. Let's also assume that the channel is not already stored in the satellite's list of channels.

Question 1) Is the only way to enter a new channel manually, under any circumstances, to go under Installation > Edit TP/Satellite > (Select desired satellite) > Edit TP > and then enter the desired frequency, SR, and polarity?

At this point, the manually entered channel can be selected in the Antenna Setup menu and, assuming that the same satellite is selected in the menu on the left, can therefore be used as a channel for measuring signal quality.

Question 2) Once the quality meter indicates that the receiver has locked onto the signal, is it necessary to first perform a TP scan of that particular channel before it is stored in memory, assigned a channel number, and can be viewed full screen? I realize that the satellite scan is an option that can be run directly from the antenna setup menu and that this would scan for all of the channels saved under the selected satellite, however if I wanted to view only the single channel that I used for adjusting the dish, would I first have to run a TP scan of that particular channel?

I guess what's still a little confusing to me is that there seem to be two sets of channels...one set stored under each individual satellite, and then a second set of channels that have been detected by the receiver in some form of scan and have "officially" been assigned a channel number. If I am understanding this properly, then is it possible in a program like Channel Master to add and edit the numbered channel listings? In other words, with the receiver it seems like the only way to assign a channel to a numbered memory slot is to have the receiver first detect the channel through some form of scan. With a program like Channel Master, could I edit the numbered channel listings and input channels that the receiver hasn't necessarily detected yet?

 

[Mr Tony]

Thanks to everyone for the continued help and support! I've now been tinkering with my dish for a couple of hours, and in addition to my true south satellite, AMC 3, which I also hit yesterday, I've been working my way west across the arc and have successfully hit IA 8, Galaxy 11, IA 6, Galaxy 3C, and most recently IA 5. Fortunately, I'm in the section of the Clarke Belt which is fairly flat, so I've been able to hit all of these satellites simply by adjusting my azimuth and without having to adjust elevation and polarity. Granted, if I were looking to peak on these satellites I would probably need to make some sort of skew adjustment, but I'm still getting 40% - 50% signal strengths which are more than enough to lock onto a signal.

I'm the same way
IA6 is my True south so I can go form AMC3-AMC4 (87-101) with little elevation change

I touched on this question a little earlier in the thread, but now that I understand the receiver a little better, I thought it might be worth trying to re-word the question. Let's say that prior to trying to aim the dish at a satellite, I have a known channel that I would like to enter as a guide for signal quality while adjusting the dish. Let's also assume that the channel is not already stored in the satellite's list of channels.

Question 1) Is the only way to enter a new channel manually, under any circumstances, to go under Installation > Edit TP/Satellite > (Select desired satellite) > Edit TP > and then enter the desired frequency, SR, and polarity?

At this point, the manually entered channel can be selected in the Antenna Setup menu and, assuming that the same satellite is selected in the menu on the left, can therefore be used as a channel for measuring signal quality.

correct. That is the only way to manually enter a transponder

Question 2) Once the quality meter indicates that the receiver has locked onto the signal, is it necessary to first perform a TP scan of that particular channel before it is stored in memory, assigned a channel number, and can be viewed full screen?

to see the picture, yes

I realize that the satellite scan is an option that can be run directly from the antenna setup menu and that this would scan for all of the channels saved under the selected satellite, however if I wanted to view only the single channel that I used for adjusting the dish, would I first have to run a TP scan of that particular channel?

yes. Run a TP scan of a STRONG transponder once you get a signal. Then fine tune and run a smart scan

I guess what's still a little confusing to me is that there seem to be two sets of channels...one set stored under each individual satellite, and then a second set of channels that have been detected by the receiver in some form of scan and have "officially" been assigned a channel number. If I am understanding this properly, then is it possible in a program like Channel Master to add and edit the numbered channel listings? In other words, with the receiver it seems like the only way to assign a channel to a numbered memory slot is to have the receiver first detect the channel through some form of scan. With a program like Channel Master, could I edit the numbered channel listings and input channels that the receiver hasn't necessarily detected yet?

the transponder list is just stored in there so you wouldn't have to do a smart scan every time you wanted to scan a satellite (say, something changes on the transponder like the PIDS)

Entering the transponders manually doesn't give you a picture. All it does is store the info for aiming a dish or for future scanning. Once you scan in the channels then you can work with ChannelMaster to edit names, move around channels, etc.

I woudl scan the satellites and get everything logged, then use Channel Master to edit the names, etc.

 

[IA6Newspath]

Thanks for your additional help, Iceberg. Here's the reason why I'm particularly interested the process of manually adding channels to the numbered channel listings. Say, for example, that there are a number of TPs for which I have the frequency, SR, and polarity, but which are only used occasionally and not constantly transmitting. Do I understand correctly that in order to assign these channels to a numbered channel, I would first have to catch them transmitting, either through a smart scan or by entering the TP information manually and catching the channel in an active state through TP or satellite scan?

I have downloaded Channel Master and have been experimenting with adding these channels manually, but so far it seems like a pretty lengthy process, as it doesn't seem like there's a way to create a channel without having to first create a TP listing under a satellite.

 

[Mr Tony]

Thanks for your additional help, Iceberg. Here's the reason why I'm particularly interested the process of manually adding channels to the numbered channel listings. Say, for example, that there are a number of TPs for which I have the frequency, SR, and polarity, but which are only used occasionally and not constantly transmitting. Do I understand correctly that in order to assign these channels to a numbered channel, I would first have to catch them transmitting, either through a smart scan or by entering the TP information manually and catching the channel in an active state through TP or satellite scan?

correct. You also have to remember some of those transponders get reused by different news people and the PIDS change. So if you have a channel stored and someone else uses that frequency/symbol rate, you'll get sigbnal but a black screen unless you rescan

I have downloaded Channel Master and have been experimenting with adding these channels manually, but so far it seems like a pretty lengthy process, as it doesn't seem like there's a way to create a channel without having to first create a TP listing under a satellite.

unless you know the PIDS (audio, video, PCR) adding them is useless. Smart scan works better

 

[IA6Newspath]

Ok...so what I've gathered from your reply, Iceberg, is that in some cases it's essentially pointless to rely on a channel automatically generated by a smart search if the particular channel is not a constant carrier on account of the fact that PIDs may change from one uplink to another. Furthermore, if I understand correctly, this even holds true for services like Newspath and ABSAT that are not necessarily constant carriers but nonetheless always pull from the same pool of transponders which all use the same SR, polarity, and FEC.

That said, is the best way to monitor these kinds of services to enter the known TPs under their respective satellites, then run a TP scan for the desired TPs if I want to check the channels for activity? I noticed that ChannelMaster has an option to assign a name to TPs, however it doesn't appear as though this naming carries over to my 3500 receiver (all I see in any TP listings are the frequency, polarity, and SR). Is this the case, or is there a way to view the TP names on the TP listing pages?

Also, I noticed that when a smart scan generates a list of channels, the detected channels aren't copied over to the TP list. Keeping in mind that if a detected channel is not a constant carrier and that it may be necessary to run a scan in order to detect the channel in the future, is there a way to copy a channel listing to a TP entry so that the same channel could be detected by a TP or satellite scan at a later time?

 

[Mr Tony]

Ok...so what I've gathered from your reply, Iceberg, is that in some cases it's essentially pointless to rely on a channel automatically generated by a smart search if the particular channel is not a constant carrier on account of the fact that PIDs may change from one uplink to another.

correct

Furthermore, if I understand correctly, this even holds true for services like Newspath and ABSAT that are not necessarily constant carriers but nonetheless always pull from the same pool of transponders which all use the same SR, polarity, and FEC.

They may use the same freq, sr but the Pids are different. Most of them stay the same so once they're logged in the channel list, you should be fine

That said, is the best way to monitor these kinds of services to enter the known TPs under their respective satellites, then run a TP scan for the desired TPs if I want to check the channels for activity?

you can do that but I would just run a smart scan. That makes sure you get the stuff (and wont be monitoring a dead TP)

I noticed that ChannelMaster has an option to assign a name to TPs, however it doesn't appear as though this naming carries over to my 3500 receiver (all I see in any TP listings are the frequency, polarity, and SR). Is this the case, or is there a way to view the TP names on the TP listing pages?

not that I'm aware of. I think it just shows the freq, pol, symbol rate

Also, I noticed that when a smart scan generates a list of channels, the detected channels aren't copied over to the TP list. Keeping in mind that if a detected channel is not a constant carrier and that it may be necessary to run a scan in order to detect the channel in the future, is there a way to copy a channel listing to a TP entry so that the same channel could be detected by a TP or satellite scan at a later time?

yes it will. If there is a new transponder it will store it at the end. The exception is if the frequency is already logged in the list. As an example, lets say you have 12000 V 9000 stored and in doing a blind scan you pivk up 12000 V 8000. The new one will log a channel (if there is one) but won't update on the TP list because there already is a 12000 in there. If you manually add it, then they both will stay in there.

 

[IA6Newspath]

Thanks, Iceberg. Now, if only I can figure out why Channel Master is deleting the names I've entered for various TPs I've added. If I save a channel listing file and then re-open it, it seems that the only TPs that retain the name I've specified are those that already have a corresponding channel that has been scanned. Otherwise, if a TP has not yet been scanned in and assigned a channel (this is the case for the majority of TPs I've entered), its TP name has mysteriously vanished when I re-open a .bin channel listing file that I just saved. Am I missing something, or is this possibly a bug in the program?

 

[Mr Tony]

Thanks, Iceberg. Now, if only I can figure out why Channel Master is deleting the names I've entered for various TPs I've added. If I save a channel listing file and then re-open it, it seems that the only TPs that retain the name I've specified are those that already have a corresponding channel that has been scanned. Otherwise, if a TP has not yet been scanned in and assigned a channel (this is the case for the majority of TPs I've entered), its TP name has mysteriously vanished when I re-open a .bin channel listing file that I just saved. Am I missing something, or is this possibly a bug in the program?

that sounds like a bug. I've loaded channel lists and there have been some satellites with 50+ transponders on thm and they have stayed. Havent done it with a Pansat in a while.

 

[IA6Newspath]

Well, I've reported what seems to be a software bug on the Channel Master forum, and on account of this problem with Channel Master, I'm going to try Pansat's channel editing program. From what I understand, however, Pansat's software cannot save channel listings as .bin files (it saves them as .gtd files), and as .gtd files can't be uploaded to the 3500 receiver by SD card, it looks like I'll need to go the null modem cable route. I noticed in Pansat's GTRom loader software, however, that if you select "Channel Data File" as the file type, the default file type shown in the pop-up file browser window is .bin and not .gtd as I was expecting. There is, of course, the option to choose "All Files", but I'm curious GTRom loader will be able to upload a .gtd channel flie to the receiver, as it appears as though the program is asking for a .bin file. It it possible to transfer a .gtd channel listing to the receiver using a null modem cable and the GTRom software, or is some kind of file conversion needed?

EDIT:
Looks like I managed to answer my own question. Uploading and downloading .gtd channel listings can be done directly through Pansat's channel listing software and doesn't require the GTRom software. I tried downloading the channel listing from my receiver to my computer through the channel editor software and it worked just fine.

 

[Tron]

Remember that, with digital satellite, a transponder is not the same as a channel. A transponder that carries digital programming can carry many channels on the same transponder. An example is 11720 (V) on G-10R. There are numerous channels on that transponder. Some transponders only have one channel, but many have more.

In the analog days, each transponder corresponded one to one with a channel. That is because the entire bandwidth of the transponder was required (still is with analog channels) to carry just one channel of analog programming.

This is what the function of PIDs on digital transponders is. They distinguish each stream (channel) of digital video and audio on the transponder.

 

[IA6Newspath]

Remember that, with digital satellite, a transponder is not the same as a channel.

Correct. I do realize that many transponders on satellites like G10 and IA 5 are MCPC, as they have multiple channels on a single carrier/transponder. In that case, I'm not sure if my receiver would carry over the TP name to all detected channels on the single carrier, or create channel names based on the service name of each individual channel. However, a majority of the TPs I've programmed manually have only a single channel, so ideally I'd like to have the receiver keep the TP name in memory so that it can assign my specified name to the channel when it is scanned and detected as opposed to naming the channel as its detected service name. This would keep me from having to go back later and re-name channels.

 

[IA6Newspath]

On an unrelated note, I'm curious as to whether or not Pansat receivers run a PID scan during TP and/or satellite scans. In other words, if I have a channel or channels that appear to be in need of revised PIDs, will a TP or satellite scan update the PIDs for the channels, provided that the TPs listings from which the channels were scanned are still in the TP listing and thus re-scanned in a TP or satellite scan?

 

[Mr Tony]

On an unrelated note, I'm curious as to whether or not Pansat receivers run a PID scan during TP and/or satellite scans. In other words, if I have a channel or channels that appear to be in need of revised PIDs, will a TP or satellite scan update the PIDs for the channels, provided that the TPs listings from which the channels were scanned are still in the TP listing and thus re-scanned in a TP or satellite scan?

yes they will. As long as the freq, pol & symbol rate match up you can rescan the TP for new pids.

 

[IA6Newspath]

Well, here's another question about my Pansat 3500 receiver. When I run a satellite scan and a TP is detected but a channel listing(s) has already been created for that particular TP in a previous scan, in most cases the receiver won't create a duplicate channel listing and the channel will show up in the satellite scan window by the name I assigned to it. However, there have been a few cases where a satellite scan has created a duplicate entry of an already existing channel, in which case the duplicate channel shows up in the satellite scan window named as the detected service ID. That said, I'm curious as to why the receiver seems to duplicate some channels but doesn't duplicate others.