What can you get with a 6 foot dish and more questions...

[guapoharry]

What can you get with a 6 foot Fortec dish and a BSC621?

Also, what other low cost LNBF options instead of a BSC621 might be worth considering?

Also, what birds are popular? Is there a G-10R of C-band?

Thanks.

 

[rglore]

My cheap six foot steel dish with LNBF was just as good as my eight foot mesh dish. It got all the sats in the arc on my analog receiver. That was six or seven years ago.

 

[tdti1]

Get a larger dish, like the 240cm Geosat dish with polar mount and the Geosat c/ku lnbf, personally I would not go under a 10'

 

[badhat]

I personally don't have much C band experience outside of occasionally having to swing dishes to another bird at work.... but is it really necessary to use an extra large dish to pick up C band considering that the birds output a ton more wattage than they did back in the day? I mean back in the day weren't they only putting out something like 12w for example... and now days some are up to 120w?

 

[Anole]

The bigger dishes are used because at 3.5 - 4 ghz, you need 'em to get the narrow beamwidth for close-spaced satellites.
At higher frequencies, smaller dishes can have sufficiently narrow beamwidth without being so large.
If it was not for adjacent satellites, I think a lot of C-band could be received on 4-foot dishes.

And then there is the annoying poor-FEC systems!
Those where you need the cleanest signal because there is very little error correction.
And adjacent satellites play a role in that problem, so tuning them out, gives you the sufficient signal to noise ratio (low bit error rate) to decode such carriers.
Newer encoding schemes likewise put a strain on the quality of the signal.

And of course, some satellite transponders are just weak.

As for what you can get, ask the guys on 4' dishes.
Or, look for the posts by Iceberg, concerning his 6' dishes.
I think instead of bitching about what he can't get, he enjoys what he can.
So, his cup is half full, not half empty.

I've got my eye on several interesting commercial solid 6' dishes, if an 8' doesn't come bite me in the butt first!

You might also search the FTA forum for previous discussions of what a six foot dish will yield, for more info.

 

[john green]

I have the 6 foot Fortec with the BCS621 and have found very little that I could not get.
Bigger is better but 6 foot works for most sats that I look at.
Iceberg will probably agree.

 

[Mr Tony]

I can get 99% of the channels 95% of the time. I have some issues with the channels that are 7/8 FEC (like the Equity stuff).

DVB-S2 has been a bugger for me but I havent tried to peak it yet

using 6 footer and BSC621

 

[Mr Tony]

I meant 95% of the channels 99% of the time

 

[Anole]

clarification

I wonder how many of you six-footers actually use the BSC-621 on Ku band?
It is my understanding that it just gets used for C-band.
I've run into darned few who convincingly claimed they got it to work well on both bands.

Which isn't necessarily so bad.
Most everyone has little dishes for Ku anyhow.

 

[TRG]

Also, what birds are popular? Is there a G-10R of C-band?

I would like to know this as well. Anybody?

 

[john green]

I wonder how many of you six-footers actually use the BSC-621 on Ku band?
It is my understanding that it just gets used for C-band.
I've run into darned few who convincingly claimed they got it to work well on both bands.

Which isn't necessarily so bad.
Most everyone has little dishes for Ku anyhow.

I have never tried it because of some of the negatives I have read here. I really never needed it because I have KU on the DS2076. I might try this sometime this weekend if it's not too hot.

 

[phlatwound]

I would like to know this as well. Anybody?

Not as many as on G18 (G10R), but Equity has a few channels on G3 C @ 93W.

G4 @ 99W has the big 5 nets (CBS, CW, ABC, NBC & FOX).

 

[Anole]

curious, too

Is it 99º w out of Puerto Rico, carrying network ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, & CW?
If ya can't get any of those as local OTA, I'll bet this would be a great solution.

A lot of the other stuff I see in public lists, such as QUBO, Ion, etc, I get digital OTA here in LA.
We've got around 50 subchannels, and they're all looking for content!

 

[gabshere]

I wonder how many of you six-footers actually use the BSC-621 on Ku band?
It is my understanding that it just gets used for C-band.
I've run into darned few who convincingly claimed they got it to work well on both bands.

Which isn't necessarily so bad.
Most everyone has little dishes for Ku anyhow.

i have one on my 7 1/2 fter but its not tuned perfect ( yet ) i have one bent feedhorn strut. i have a second bsc621 that i hope to place on my 10 fter to test .....

on the 7 1/2 fter i get good c-band signals and on ku i get average signals on most sats ... some i can't pickup due to threshold ( like AMC 3) but others like 123 & 97 i get just as good of a signals as with my motorized ku only primestar dish.


when i get to test the 10 fter i will be able to determine what i suspect ...that the bsc621 does well on a smaller dish like a 8 ft or less and is harder to tune on a 10 ft dish and above ..... but until i test it this is only a theory

 

[Mr Tony]

Also, what birds are popular? Is there a G-10R of C-band?

If we are just talking FTA DVB I would say the big 3 are
G16 at 99
IA13 at 121
G3 at 95

G16 has as noted the nets from Puerto Rico/VI. They are the NY nets with diff commercials and news edited out in most cases. They also have ABC HD and My Network TV...get an analog box and lots of wild feeds. A few of us have fixed dishes at G16 (me included)

IA13 has Sportsman Network and SportsTime Ohio

G3 has the Equity mux. Lots of Spanish but a few more RTN's

 

[TRG]

If we are just talking FTA DVB I would say the big 3 are
G16 at 99
IA13 at 121
G3 at 95

G16 has as noted the nets from Puerto Rico/VI. They are the NY nets with diff commercials and news edited out in most cases. They also have ABC HD and My Network TV...get an analog box and lots of wild feeds. A few of us have fixed dishes at G16 (me included)

IA13 has Sportsman Network and SportsTime Ohio

G3 has the Equity mux. Lots of Spanish but a few more RTN's

It looks like G3 has a lot of feeds too.

If I decided to buy an analog box what should I look for?

 

[Mr Tony]

It looks like G3 has a lot of feeds too.

not really. There are some horse race feeds but they usually are just balck screens

If I decided to buy an analog box what should I look for?

honestly....make sure it does 3 things
-C & KU (most do)
-works
-HAS A REMOTE!!

 

[truckracer]

I had a 6' prodelin offset commercial dish for c band when I started. It worked "Ok" meaning signals were acceptable. Some things I could not get and some I could.

No 6' will ever perform as well as an 8' dish. It just can't. Digital signals demand a tighter beamwidth or "view". An 8' dish has less side view of neighboring satellites than a 6' etc.

Most 8' dishes can see around 2 degrees of sky. My 7.5' mesh dish can see 2.1 degrees of sky.

My 10' dish can see 1.7 degrees. It only can see 0.5 degrees on ku band (WOW!)

You get cleaner digital signals with the larger reflector and less noise.

new dvb s-2 signals almost demand a 10' dish I have found. Some well tuned 8' dishes can get the harder to receive s-2 stuff. With the cost of bandwidth now days you can only expect uplinkers to use less and less FEC making it harder to get the signals.


As for the BSC-621 I had disappointing results on ku band with the unit I purchased. C-band worked fine.
I switched to a corotor II then to a dual c dual ku orthomode feedhorn. The corotor II and ortho feedhorn works superior to the bsc 621 on both c and ku bands.

You will spend a lot more money on a corotor II than the bsc-621 however.

 

[tdti1]

Yes feeds using H.264 DVB-S2 8psk and a fec of 5/6 or 7/8 will probably not come in on anything less than 10' or larger, in the near future most undersized dishes will probably have to be used for ku-band only.

 

[Corrado]

I had a 6' prodelin offset commercial dish for c band when I started. It worked "Ok" meaning signals were acceptable. Some things I could not get and some I could.

Truckracer, was the BSC621 the only LNBF you tried on the Prodelin?