Thread: LPB moved to 87?

Originally Posted by cyberham

I have been looking for days and can never receive LPB at 87W Ku anymore. I have tweaked my dish and everything is coming in better than ever from SES 2. I get zero signal right now on the LPB tp. Is LPB still there?

I know when I first set up my dish, I was getting everything except LPB. I was able to fix the problem, I changed my longitude on the USALS setting from 81.6W (which is my correct longitude) to 82.1. That seemed to get me every channel including LPB. Before I did that, I was receiving everything else at 87W, but for some odd reason, I couldn't get LPB.

Originally Posted by Andrew K

...I changed my longitude on the USALS setting from 81.6W (which is my correct longitude) to 82.1. That seemed to get me every channel including LPB...

So you basically moved yourself 1/2 degree to the west. I guess this is a way of telling the dish to move 1/2 degree east. I tried this and moved myself first west (0.5 to 1 to 1.5 degrees), then I moved myself to the east in the same way. I could see the signal on the other tps changing (going down) when I did this. Zero LPB signal. Weather today is excellent, clear sky, all other signals on all satellites which vary with weather are stronger than usual. I did raise the dish elevation a very slight amount the other day to peak 15W. Hard to believe that minor change would kill a signal at 87W though.

when i had the geopro antenna on the roof with usals and i had a strong wind from the west it would slightly move the antenna a half a degree. would fix it by moving my location until i got up to readjust the antenna. charlie

For what it's worth, early this morning LPB was missing for a few minutes -- my box showed no signal on that transponder. Then suddenly it came back again, booming.

Any chance the actual beam footprint can be changed, for example, to focus more on its intended audience which would leave me out?

highly unlikely the footprint changed. But I know when LPB was at 125W it seemed to have (for me at least) the local AM radio reception issue

really strong at day
sucky at night

Originally Posted by Andrew K

...I changed my longitude on the USALS setting from 81.6W (which is my correct longitude) to 82.1. That seemed to get me every channel including LPB...

I am now successfully using this trick of slightly editing my USALS lat/long coordinates to improve signal reception for some satellites. The S9 (with current firmware, at least) is not easy to use to manually swing the dish to search for a signal in diseqc mode. It is easier to leave the USALS in control and modify my position. This has enabled me to get Pentagon HD, 103W and 15W much better using the motor, though I still don't see a flicker from LPB.

I've had my USALS set a half degree off for months now, and it's worked fine for me. It's better than getting on the roof in the winter. I get all the channels. I don't think my pole is perfectly vertical, but oh well, it's good enough.

Once you've gotten where you need to go with USALS for any sat, can't you just fine tune and save/switch it to Diseq controlled. You can have some sats USALS and some diseq if you want. I just find that once the sat is locked in, a lot easier to adjust with a bump here or a bump there using diseq than to fuss around with USALS settings. And as the motor ages might just get more slop in the gearing or the mast becomes less perfect so USALS becomes less accurate. I know with my mast being as vertical as I can get it but not perfect (especially with temperature fluctuations) and my due south reference dubious, USALS does not give consistent or repeatable results across the entire arc.