Need help for a new FTA setup. Winegard 3100 Stab 100 Viewsat2000 ultra

[GreatNorth]

Greetings everyone.

Just got this equipment and I am trying to get up&running.

Current localisation is 45.3N, 72.5W. Invacom qph-031.

Did try a few thing, but I am a complete newbie on fta. Did read more than a bit, but didn't understand it all.

Setup the pole, plumb and straigth. Attached the motor at 45° as specified in the manual. Using USALS.

How do I proceed from here ?

Unsure about the inclination of the antenna. Unsure about my true south bird.

Unsure about a lot of thing...

Crying on the roof

Please be specific, I will do my best to understand.

Tried an inclination of 23° on the antenna. Trying to get to sbs6 or amc6 without success. Signal strength is about 60. Quality is 0
What I am missing ?

What information should I enter in the usals screen in order to get a signal ?

What should I do ? Hang on the roof

 

[Tron]

First try to hit a satellite without the motor, that will give you a good idea of how to aim the dish (it's MUCH harder than a DirecTV or Dish Network dish since the signals are weaker). Use VERY small movements of the dish, then back out and see if you have any change in your signal reading before moving the dish again. Also, be sure to tune to a live transponder (one with something on it that's not dead) when looking at your quality meter, and only look for quality. Strength means nothing.

 

[Anole]

Ice compiled a nice list of live/hot transponders on all the popular birds.

I read a Stab PDF on tuning up their HH-90, and I'm sure they have a similar document for the -100.
The setup does seem too simple, but I believe it's correct.

Mounting and setting up the motor sets your real elevation.

After all the offsets are added and subtracted, what used to be the elevation on your antenna, really becomes your declination.
This page gives suggested declination , at the bottom.
This page (about half way down) discusses it pretty clearly.
If these explanations make your brain hurt, refer back to the Stab literature.

 

[GreatNorth]

Thanks for the help.

The STAB manual is exactly what I am following right now.

Thanks for the live/strong transponder list. added one for amc6.

Is there special setting I should set in the antenna configuration. lnb on/high/low, standard/universal/etc ?

Will try to re-aim the dish again with the motor, since everything is in place. If it doesn't work, I will try without the motor.

The stab manual in usals mode make it deceptivly simple indeed. It doesn't turn out that way.

 

[turbosat]

I have the Ultra, setting up a satellite is easy, if you know what the terms mean in the menu. If you're going for AMC6 KU, in the antenna menu, pick Universal for your invacom (I believe that is correct for that type) --then drop down to the next line and put lnb power to ON, Lnb freq 10750, then motor -on. Hit exit and save the info. Then go to Channel Scan-be sure AMC6 is listed at top, drop down to the EDIT line (it high-lights EDIT TP), hit Enter.
Then F!-Add user TP --IF you dont see any transponders listed. Add this one 12053 mhz Vertical ,exit out, then hit OK to scan that transponder. Once you find the bird you'll have some NBC transponders with msnbc, or black screen if they're not on. Those come and go all day long. That should give you a start...Good luck
charles

 

[GreatNorth]

Hum... Did try many of your hint.

However, no success... What's puzzling me is that even with many hours of trying. I never ever got a quality signal to move. It is stuck at zero.

The motor is rotating fine. And between the motor and the invacom I got a small viewsat switch connected lnb1 - C. Lnb2 - L.

By googling a bit, I found that the winegard 3101 has an offset of 24°. When the antenna is leveled, it mark 29° on the antenna. So, to get the correct elevation, I increased to 43°. Which should mean the correct elevation for AMC6. If I calculated correctly.

My magnetic declination should be 16° here. So I targetted 196° for azimut.

I even have a starchoice antenna localted a few feet below the winegard. I tried to align it with the lnb arm of the starchoice. Without success.

Is my setup correct ?

What's the next step ?

 

[GreatNorth]

I also used 107.3 (AnikF1)-11902 H 5859 or 11912 H 5859 for the alignment and did also tried 72 (AMC6)-12143 V 2573. No success with both of them.

Afaik, I did install more than a few starchoice antenna. Those are not hard to install.

It's not the case with this FTA kit.

 

[jsattv]

GreatNorth, my suggestion is to look for your South Satellite first. Go to http://satcalculator.freehostia.com/ then enter in your: type of Stab Motor, enter in your City & Zip Code if you have one, and press Calculate. Then you can zero right in on your street. This will tell you your North Latitude and West Longitude. Once you have your West Longitude, aim for the Satellite that is close to it. (For example my West Longitude was 97.243 so this told me that my South Satellite was IntelSat 5.0 97.0W). The Satcalculator will also tell you what to set your Dish Elevation to and what to set your Motor Elevation to. This will give you a starting point. However I found my Dish Elevation to be 10 points too low for my Fortec Star Dish, so if its warm enough, can you carry out your ViewSat Receiver and a small TV right beside the Dish to set this all up?

One other suggestion that I found out on this great site is that when you go into Antenna Setup on your Receiver when you get to USALS press the "OK Button" and then the Down Arrow Button to move the Dish to the required Satellite, then press OK and the dish should move to the required position. Hope this helps.

 

[GreatNorth]

At last.

Seem I got a bad disec switch.

By moving the motor to anik f1. Disconnecting the motor and connecting the receiver directly to the lnbf, I got starchoice info channel coming in the clear.

Will leave that there for the night and try another disec switch another day.

 

[Mr Tony]

By moving the motor to anik f1. Disconnecting the motor and connecting the receiver directly to the lnbf, I got starchoice info channel coming in the clear.

thats impossible...StarChoice uses DCII as their standard (I say encryption) and the Viewsat is DVB. SO its a different format

 

[GreatNorth]

Hum...

Maybe a mistake on my part. At least I was getting something on the Q meter of the viewsat. But the motor was set to anik f1.

I was thinking that this was the info channel that coming in clear. In fact, I got no image, but got the Quality up to 95. Which is a start ( at least for me ).

Or else, your saying that I was not on the right bird and I was getting the wrong sat ?

 

[Tron]

Does your Viewsat have a feature called blind scan? I'm not clear on whether any of the Viewsats do. If you do have blind scan, scan the satellite to find the channels. Even without blind scan, a standard TP scan will help with this. We can then determine what satellite you are on.

 

[mrweather]

I know the 2000 Extreme has "hardware" blind scan but I'm not so sure about the Ultra.

 

[determined]

A couple of years ago I was fighting getting Ku up and running with a corotor feed horn. C-band was fine but not much Ku. As it turned out my brand new Ku LNB was bad and it took me 6 months of aligning and realigning to figure this out and get a new one, which fixed everything. What was fooling me was that I could get the DISH test channel. Now I was getting this with my Motorola 920 which is analog and DCII. I had no DVB equipment like I do now. In retrospect I now know that this is "impossible" for the reasons that Iceberg said, yet, I swear it happened. (Twilight Zone music here) With the new LNB I never saw that test channel again until I got my Coolsat. Is there any way you could borrow another lnb and see if that is the problem? Before you went there though, I would recommend that you really understand dish setup and make doubly sure you got it right.

 

[GreatNorth]

I confirm the the vs2000 ultra does have the blind scan function.

If it is not raining today, I will continue dish alignment with a new diseqc switch.

Will see where I get on this.

What a know as of today.

I am a starchoice subscriber. I tried one of the sc receiver on the antenna. Got signal and channel coming correctly on anik f1.

Borrowed the bell expressvue receiver from a friend. Moved the motor with the viewsat to nimiq1. Hook up the bev receiver. Got signal from bev too.

However, I had to move (by hand) the antenna to get bev.

Seem that my installation is not quite on target. Will try to adjust that.

 

[turbosat]

Great North, are you setting the disq-switch in your antenna-installation menu? You have to tell the receiver which Port of the switch that a particular antenna is on, You will get some signal reading if you're on a satellite even then,before you start scanning.
charles

 

[GreatNorth]

Heu... Diseqc switch. Yes, I have one in between the motor and the lnb.

However, I didn't do any special settings for this switch.

What should I set for the switch to work with the lnb and the receiver ?

The diseqc switch is lnb1 is connected to lnb C and switch lnb2 is connected to lnb L.

What should be my setup for this ?

 

[Tron]

Most of your satellites will be setup for DiSEqC port 2 except for the free stuff on the Echostars, which will be port 1.

 

[GreatNorth]

Just a quick word to say thank you to all.

This is all new for me, but with your help, I am now up&running even if not exactly set on the arc.

Learning is quite fun.