Thread: Welcome New Members! (Please Say HI here!)

Welcome aboard!
To you and to dozens of other people who joined us today in spite of the server outage!

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Originally Posted by jasperjones

Hi,Saw your site on DrDish.TV, last week which was been aired on Hotbird 13 west.
Been into satellite for a few years now (since 1989 !) ,but still a beginner (or should it be slow learner!) Using a 1.2M P/F dish,with a twin output LNB,moved by a 36volt superjack arm,not played with DiSEqC yet! I use a Strong 4375 to move it,and also use a Fortec Lifetime Ultra.We also have Sky tv,UK answer to Dish Network,but costs more!
I live on the coast in north wales,in the uk,on a clear day (no rain!) we can see ireland and north west coast of england
Nice to be here.
Peter

Hi Peter!

Greetings from Germany to the island

I also was a SKY subscriber a few years ago (German SKY Service). My favorite was SKY ONE with "The Simpsons" and "Malcolm in the Middle". But the cost of SKY was to high ... we Germans had to pay €200 extra per year + the monthly costs of €28 for the family package and ~€500 for the SKY-Box

Now I have Kabel Deutschland (Cable Germany) on ASTRA 3A - 23.5°East for €13 (Home €9 + English €4).

Hi,

I am from USA. Sure i will learn a lot from this site.

Hi everyone
Was just cruising the net when I came upon your site.
Been fooling with fta for past year. I have a viewsat 2000 and a st2000a which keep me going crazy.
Look forward to famillarizing myself with your site.
Good luck to all

Hi razi, jackeebaby, and all other members who joined our forum today!
Welcome aboard!

welcome razi and jackeebaby. hope to see you around.

All these new members! I guess I picked the right time to get into FTA!

This may sound corny, but it's been a dream of mine to receive satellite TV since I was a kid. I checked out a book on satellite TV (this is back in the mid-80's) and was totally fascinated. Well, this weekend I finally succeeded. It was all one big experiment for me, so I used the cheapest equipment I could get. I've had an old 30" x 40" ex-Primestar dish sitting around doing nothing for 6 years or so. I bought a cheap Chinese-made 0.3dB universal LNB and a cheap Taiwanese-made FTA receiver (many of you have probably seen them for - $60 or so) on eBay. The Primestar dish needs a 3" pole, which I couldn't find at Lowe's or Home Depot, so I bought the closest thing I could find (2.5" ID PVC electrical conduit) and wrapped enough duct tape around it to make it 3" OD (I only needed about 1/8"). I stuck it in the ground about 2' and made it plumb just by packing the dirt tighter on one side or the other. I then mounted the big, somewhat heavy dish to it, hooked up a cheap ($10 - $20) "satellite finder" to the LNB, and was shocked to discover that the dish aimed quite accurately! The satellite finder was worth its weight in gold, I swear. I just set the dish's elevation, pointed it in roughly the right direction with a compass, moved it back and forth (the whole pipe rotates in the ground quite easily - this setup will not hold up in a stiff wind), and I hit the satellite I was aiming for every time.

The only problem I encountered had to do with my lack of understanding of how my universal LNB worked. I didn't realize that I needed the 22 KHz tone to switch it to the high band, and that the LO frequency I gave the receiver had to match that. I was thoroughly confused and frustrated, so I swapped that LNB out for a DTV/DishNet-style LNB and aimed for Echostar 7. I figured that vastly simplified everything - no need to skew the LNB due to the circular polarization, the satellite didn't require ultra-precise aiming, and there was only one LO frequency to worry about.

Well, it worked - the first ever FTA signal I received was NASA TV on Echostar 7. After some reading on the net I eventually figured out I needed the 22 KHz tone for the universal LNB to work correctly, so I went about setting up everything for my intended target: Intelsat Americas 5. I wanted to catch the Dr. Dish rebroadcast on Sunday, and this was late Saturday night. I had a bit of trouble - the sat finder kept giving me a good reading but I couldn't find anything on the transponders I was expecting. Eventually I realized that I was receiving more than one strong signal from other nearby sats (Galaxy 4R was one, I think) so I'd just have to find IA5 by trial and error. I also had to trial-and-error my way to the correct LNB skew, which also took a while. But around 1:00am EST, I was successful. I had IA5 loud and clear! No wind blew my dish out of alignment overnight, so I was able to catch Dr. Dish's show Sunday afternoon. It was a good weekend.

Welcome to the forum, pestie!
Make sure to join our Party later tonight!