Thread: I've picked a satellite but how to know which is?

Hi guys I just got my equipment 1.2M dish, sat finder, compass, DVB PCI card, and using the cordenates I got over my Latitude and longitude I got a satellite (sat finder gave me the high pitch sound) but now when I use my DVB card I got no satellite channels at all, even when I do blind scan with dvb prog I got some signal meters but after the blind scan it says no channels so I would like to know which satellite I got, is there a way to do that?

you could look on lyngsat for the sat your trying to hit and manually enter one of the channel's info. If it comes in you know what sat your on? If you get nothing than move to the next sat and do the same!

or just check out thelist

Getting that first satellite is always a challenge
First thing, is your LNB frequency set correctly in progDVB, if you have any switches are they set up correctly although at this stage I would avoid any switches and just go straight to the LNB.
As far as I know no DVB PCI cards on the market today support a true blind scan which means you have to take the transponder info from "The List" and manually enter it in (prog DVB may have some info already entered in) and then scan the satellite.
Since the odds are strong that you are on a neighboring sat try scanning their transponders as well until you get a lock and can identify the satellite.
I don't know what satellite your pointing at but if one of the powerful DBS broadcast satellites are nearby it's very easy to accidentally find them with your sat finder, these satellites employ circular polarization if you are using a linear LNB which is what you require for most satellites you will not get any lock at all although you sat finder will indicate a strong signal. (most of the basic sat finders)
What I do is usually employ a circular LNB to find and identify the closest DBS satellite, then peak the dish and swap out the LNB for a linear one and then nudge the dish in the required direction changing the elevation as required.

I see you aim your dish like you post on forums. Shotgun aproch eh. Lol

Well I'm getting a satellite between 93.0°W Galaxy 25 and 103.0°W AMC 1 according to the blind scan I got some of the transponders are here:

10785, 10875, 10905, 10945, 10995, 11110, 11200, 11850, 11875, 11880, 11905, 11940, 11995, 12025, 12045, 12050, 12145

and some other between but I just copied here some of them.

The level is around 50% and quality around 30%

I got no Diseqc switches or something just LNB directly plugged to my DVB-S PCI card.

My latitude is 14-15 and my longitude is between 90-91

I got the transponders list from
http://fastsatfinder.com/transponders.html

updated on september 5, 2009

So you should be using 89w or 91w not some sat between 93 and 103 as your true south.

I posted on the other forum the steps to aiming a dish w/motor.

It was also posted that you don't have blindscan so you need to enter the freq manually.

With a signal strength and quality reading, even a low quality ready you should have a lock, by doing a scan of those transponders your DVB software (prog DVB) should return a list of channels on each transponder from that you should be able to figure out what satellite you are on.

Originally Posted by updatelee

So you should be using 89w or 91w not some sat between 93 and 103 as your true south.

I posted on the other forum the steps to aiming a dish w/motor.

It was also posted that you don't have blindscan so you need to enter the freq manually.

Hi, I'm not using a motor at this moment, just plain calculations, and according to what I've read in other sites like dishpointer, etc. the azimuth I'm aiming is 190°-210° using a compass and dishpointer.com , my elevation according to my inclination meter is 51° which I think I need to fix (put the offset LNB stick closer to my dish) in order to get 46°-47° that the calculations says giving the dimentions of my dish 1.2M offset.

My dish post is almost 90° all sides except one side that is a little bit out (90.5°).

Originally Posted by Sadie

With a signal strength and quality reading, even a low quality ready you should have a lock, by doing a scan of those transponders your DVB software (prog DVB) should return a list of channels on each transponder from that you should be able to figure out what satellite you are on.

Yeah that's what I thought and I did it but after doing the whole blind scan I ended with no channels at all even when some of the frequencies got some signals.