Sat TV at sea - please help

[jeffj]

Greetings,

My name is jeff and I have a problem with a sat tv system we installed on a boat for one of our customers.

The dish is made by Raymarine, they are new to sat tv so they can't help me.
The dish has 2 coax cables coming down from the dome. Inside the dome is a computer stabilized dish. Important: this system can only point at a single satellite at a time.

The customer is subscibed to directv and he wants local channels. I have programmed the dish to point at sat 101 or sat 119. There 2 ways to make the dish switch sats: push a button on the dish control box or use the 22khz tone generated by the dss receiver. The 22khz tone works well with 1 or 2 dss receivers (no multiswitch). But, this boat has 4 receivers. We have tried several multiswitches but they all seem to block the 22khz tone. From what I have found, the only multiswitches that pass the tone are the cascadable multiswitches. True?
Can I use just 1 cascadable switch? (like the Spaun SMK2241F)?This sounds to me like it would work but what do I know

I need some way to get the tone upstream, past the multiswitch, and into the dish control box. Can anyone help me??

Thanks JeffJ

 

[Mr Tony]

moved to DirecTv forum

 

[jeffj]

Echo Echo

Why do I bother with these silly b-boards...

 

[damaged]

Why do I bother with these silly b-boards...

Hmmm, I give up, why?

 

[fkostyn]

Well, I know it is not a perfect solution, but, I could suggest two dishes, giving you four outputs.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

The problem is he is using a tracking satellite antena which is like a big dome. Its not the case of throwing up a second regular Dish for the locals.

The Dome Antenna atually moves and tracks the antenna so while out on the sea they can enjoy uninterupted service even in wavy conditions.

 

[Spin]

Yes but the dome only has 2 outputs. It's only designed to run 2 recievers at once. The only way I see switching between Sats is to use a 2nd dome with a 4x4 switch. I did a 2 dome install on a large yacht once I couldn't figure out another way around.

 

[shappyss]

this is from KVM, which makes mobile dishes for use with D*. For their system they say

For installations of three or more receivers and TVs, an active multiswitch (such as the Channel Master model 6214IFD or equivalent) must be used.

 

[jeffj]

Scott is right. This dish moves and is stabilized for use in the rolling waves. With a stationary system, the 22khz tone tells the multiswitch to take input from another satellite. With this on-board system the tone needs to get all the way up to the dish to tell it to physically swing over and point to the other sat.

From what I have learned, a cascadable multiswitch will pass the tone. Normally a cascadable switch is used below a regular multiswitch. The regular switch at the top of the stack receives the tone that has passed thru the cascadable. Can I leave out the regular switch at the top and just use the 1 cascadable switch to feed 4 receivers? If not, can I use a seperate tone generator somehow?

The dish control box has a button to tell the dish to switch sats. My customer does not want to have to do that. The control box can use the 22khz tone to make operation of the system all automatic if I can get the tone up that far.

JeffJ

 

[shappyss]

"TracVision A5 is also capable of supporting more than two receivers when used with additional hardware, including third-party amplifiers. For complete details and instructions on installing more than two receivers, contact KVH's Technical Support Group at techs@kvh.com. "

 

[shappyss]

one more quote from raymarine this time (from owners manual page 18)
"In order to connect three or four IRDs to the antenna, you will need to purchase an
active multi-switch (Raymarine recommends the Channel Master 6314 IFD), and
the necessary additional RF cables.
The multi-switch has to be installed between the antenna unit and the IRDs as
shown in the following diagram.
As in the two IRD system only one of the IRDs can be configured as a two satellite
receiver. The other IRDs need to be configured as one satellite receivers. The two
Television Monitor 1
IRD 1
Television Monitor 2
IRD 2
Antenna baseplate D7961_1
RF1
POWER RF2
18 Raymarine 45 STV Satellite Television System - Owner’s Handbook
satellite receiver determines which satellite is tracked, while the other receivers
can watch any channel which is available from that satellite.
To connect three or four IRDs:
1. Connect an RF cable to RF1 and another to RF2 on the antenna base plate.
2. Connect the RF1 cable to LNB LHCP/+18 V on the multi-switch.
3. Connect the RF2 cable to LNB RHCP/+13 V on the multi-switch.
4. For each output required, connect an RF cable from an OUT connector of the
multi-switch to the LNB or ANT connector of the individual IRD units.
5. Terminate any unused connections with a suitable 75 Ohm DC terminator
block.
6. Connect the multi-switch to a 24 V DC power supply.
RF1
POWER RF2
Multiswitch
LNB
RHCP/+13V
VHF/UHF
INPUT
POWER
24V DC
LNB
LHCP/ +18V
OUT 1 OUT 2 OUT 3 OUT 4
GROUND
Antenna
baseplate
IRD 1 IRD 2 IRD 3 IRD 4 D7962_1

 

[PATONENOW]

Just a suggestion and not sure if it would work but I'm thinking a 6x8 multiswitch with the 22 tone built in like used on the 3 lnb dish and the seperate dish for locals might work. Don't mean the dishes as I understand your set-up for sea but that multiswitch.