Newb Question

[tgpo]

Lots of great information here, glad I found this place. It's difficult to find any good satellite information now that every Googled link is some sort of advertisment site or collection of garbage. You have no idea how much information I've sucked out of this forum in the last 36 hours. I'd like to say, "thanks". Done.

Now, with that out of the way, here is my question:

Can you make a determination of the the functionality of the SuperDish LNBs strictly from the Switch Test within the UI?

What I mean is, by running the Switch Test with all three LNB's cabled to the switch, should it not show 3 connected LNBs in the test results?

The Switch Test tells me that the outer-most LNB (the lone one, not either of the paired LNBs) is present and has acquired 110W, but the other two (FSS and DBS) have Xs and it says "N.C." for device.

I am a DishNetowrk neophyte, I readily admit, but I think it's an LNB problem and not an "Operator Head-Space and Timing" problem.

I am fairly technically saavy and I'm a software test engineer by trade, so I THINK I ruled the switch out as the problem, since I connected each of the cables out from the LNBs to each of the 3 inputs on the DP34 switch and the outer LNB was the only one to ever registed as found in the Device section of the Switch Test.

I can provide the exact steps to what I've tried and what results I got, but this is already long-winded. Really, all I'm trying to do is figure out if I am the problem or if it may, in fact, be a bad LNB set.

Thanks for reading this and for any help you may offer in advance!

 

[BFG]

What kind of superdish do you have?

A 105 or 121 setup?

One possible problem when you get a lock on 1 lnb but not on others is that it's not pointed in the right spot

for a 105 set up, the lnb by itself on the left is supossed to point at 119, so it could be that you have that looking at 110, which would be why they other lnbs are looking at nothing....

 

[chaddux]

for a 105 set up, the lnb by itself on the left is supossed to point at 119, so it could be that you have that looking at 110, which would be why they other lnbs are looking at nothing....

For a 105 SuperDISH when looking towards the front of the dish (the LNB arm coming towards you), 105 would on the left. Regardless, I believe that the "lone" LNB is always going to be the one for the FSS satellite, on the left for 105 and on the right for 121. I don't think it's ever supposed to pick up 110 or 119.

You can look here at pages 11 and 12 to confirm 105 on the left and 121 on the right. Note that the lone LNB switches sides when changing from a 105 to a 121 SuperDISH.

 

[BFG]

Wrong. You didn't look at the diagram correctly.

You can clearly see on page 11 that the lnb that has a 119 label on it is a sepate lnb. The 2 lnbs that are together are 110 and 105.

 

[tgpo]

It is a 121.

Here is what I did, I don't know if this is a "valid" test, but this is what I tried:

- As per the SuperDish instruction manual, I hooked-up ONLY "the outermost DBS LNB" (110W) to the switch and acquired 110W without much trouble.

- Next, again, as per the manual, I connected ONLY the 121W LNB to the switch and couldn't acquire anything.

With ONLY the outermost DBS LNB (110W) connected to the switch, I can hit both 110W and 119W and get signal. However, with ONLY the innermost DBS LNB (119W) I get nothing.

Mast is just about as plumb as you can get. I've used the azimuth/elevation/skew settings from the manual and from the receiver UI.

I didn't have nearly this much trouble aligning my DirecTV HD dish. Maybe that process was just easier, or maybe I got lucky.

In any event, it seems that the 119W and 121W LNBs on my SuperDish are hosed, although I'm not dumb enough to think I KNOW they are. The Switch Test shows "Dual" as a device when the 110W LNB is connected and NOT locked-onto anything, so I would assume that the other two should at least be detected by the Switch Test even if they have no signal. If this is a poor assumption then I guess it IS me being the problem!

I hate having to have someone come out and fix this, heck, being geeky and doing this kind of stuff myself is what makes life fun, but most of the people here already knew that, that's why they're here

Thanks for the reply, Bryan!

 

[BFG]

Ah, ok. Yeah it does sound like those 2 lnbs are bad if you hook them up and get recognized. If they were working, they would be detected and have X's in them, so yeah sounds like a dud...

 

[tgpo]

The "lone" one in my case was the 110W; it sits outside of the main shroud, on its own.

I hope my previous post clears-up my confusing jargon!

Thanks for that link Chad, it appears to be a slightly different version of the manual I received; the 105W SuperDish drawings depict the LNBs differently. In my manual both 105W drawings are exactly the same (like on page 11 of the manual you linked to).

In any case, I have there 121W.

Thanks again, guys.

 

[tgpo]

Here's a last-resort question:

I am unsure of the specifications of the RG-6 I have run. I put multiple RG-6 runs in a couple of years ago for DirecTV and I just grabbed one of those to hook the DishNetwork stuff up with.

Do you think it's possible that out-of-spec cable could cause the 121W and 119W LNBs not to be recognized?

Just a thought, I'll be buying a short run of properly speced cable in the morning to try it out.

 

[Dish Dude]

yes the cable could have an effect but doubtful, check all the transponders on the 110 you picked up see if there is any significant drop, say 20 pts or so, it could be the cable. Also what did you put the skew setting at? It does sound like a bad lnb, but other things could throw it off as well. Is this a straight run no wall plates, no barrels, no gblocks. They have to be rated as well as the FSS signals can do some pretty weird stuff. I would say 5% of the stuff we fix is unrated barrels and gblocks. Easy fix though

 

[tgpo]

The skew is set to 30. I can grab 110W with a skew inside of 29 and 31, anything outside that and 110W is gone. I'll look at all the transponders in the morning. It's a straight run from the DP34 to the 510, no break in the cable.

Thanks for the reply.

 

[Dish Dude]

did you mean the elevation is at 30, the tilt of the dish is the skew. Good luck

 

[tgpo]

oopss... heheh. yeah, skew is ONE-thirty, elevation is 20.

if the rain stop today, i'm going to move the cables around. it's kind of embarrassing that i never thought of testing the cables, seeing as i work in the broadcast industry

 

[bweiteka]

what was your signal strength on 110 when you had it?

 

[Dish Dude]

try bypassing the 34, with the 119 and 121, just hook the one up directly to the receiver to see what you get, have you tried swapping ports on the 34? Bypass the 34 with just the 119 sat. straight shot not through the switch see if you can lock on the 119, if you can get at least 85 to 105 lock her down and than hook all cables up to the 34 and run a check sw. If you can't lock on 119 at all it is the lnb

 

[SimpleSimon]

What Dish Dude said.

Run the 119W "pure" from the dish to the receiver. Check Switch. Aim.