LPB moved to 87?

[Andrew K]

I can't figure out what the problem could be. I know the footprint for 87W is good in my area, and I have all the necessary equipment. It's got to be a setting that's not right. I'll try to figure it out when I get home today. I can get all the PBS DVB-S2 channels at 125W just fine.

 

[Andrew K]

Ok, I'm getting a good signal on the LPB channels now. The dish was about a half degree too far west. I was getting everything on 87W, except the LPB channels until I slightly moved the dish.

 

[toucan-man]

Good for you, it is positively booming here on my 1 meter dish. I think with their signal I'll have a self-defrosting dish this winter, haha.

 

[Mr Tony]

LPB for a few days had the "nightime dropoff" but tonight its at 72 on the Manhattan

 

[toucan-man]

It's odd that I didn't see the dropoff that night you reported this, just one of the mysteries I guess. Maybe you had a raccoon climbing around on your porch blocking the dish's view of sky?

 

[joshrr]

I have it here too (the night time drop off) It will be 70 qual during the day but at night 28 qual but it still comes in on the Openbox fine even at that level for me. Most nights it only drops to 48. I wonder if it happens for the more northern folks. Im at the top of upper michigan's thumb and Ice is pretty far north in MN too. Dunno. I have a 6ft dish with a dmx741. All other S2 ku come in fine at 125w and elsewhere. C-band S2 stuff comes in fine too no drop off and I now get BOTH RTV feeds on SES-2 since its just a signal fire hose but yeah the LPB drop off is weird for me too. Must be atmospherics as those change at night and are aggravated by a bunch of different variables. Its not close to as bad as it was on 125W. I could rarely get LPB on 125W. OKLA pbs always comes in at 75 qual, montana has stabilized lately too at 65 to 72 qual but no more freeze lately. National pbs feeds come in booming at 76 qual. PBS world etc.. booming too.

It's odd that I didn't see the dropoff that night you reported this, just one of the mysteries I guess. Maybe you had a raccoon climbing around on your porch blocking the dish's view of sky?

 

[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?

 

[Dee_Ann]

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?

Yep. All the LPB channels are coming in just fine on my S10 at 87w ku, I just now checked it and went through all the channels. All there....

 

[cyberham]

Thanks...it appears my fixed dish on 125W project is back on. My dilemma is whether to fix it on 103W or 125W. I think PBS wins over NBC.

 

[Mr Tony]

I know LPB had some power issues a week or so ago (signal would be really low here in Minnesota) but its back to normal
73 on the Manhattan

 

[Andrew K]

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.

 

[cyberham]

...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.

 

[chaskuchar]

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

 

[toucan-man]

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.

 

[cyberham]

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

 

[Mr Tony]

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

 

[cyberham]

...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.

 

[Andrew K]

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.

 

[oblio]

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.

 

[cyberham]

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.

That's exactly what I used to do with my Coolsat 7000. Find a sat initially with USALS, then fine tune with DiseqC mode and save. Ultimately, all sats would be DiseqC. A manual bump of the dish can sometimes make a difference between having some breakup of signal and perfect viewing. I find even evening viewing demands a touch up of the dish compared with daytime viewing (temperature changes?). But...the S9 is not friendly like this. I do this for some satellites, mostly those with strong signals near the centre of the arc. Probably due to the tiny movement required for satellites closer to the edges of the arc, manually finding sats is almost impossible, and I can't find some of them manually. As soon as the USALS to DiseqC mode is changed, the signal is gone (probably dish shifts slightly) and I can't find it again until I return to USALS. This could be a flaw in the S9 firmware currently being used since I never had this problem with the Coolsat. I even used the Coolsat to motor and the S9 to view. But that became too cumbersome, and the Coolsat can't see DVB-S2 signals so finding sats required two monitors: one to see the Coolsat screen and one to see the S9 screen.

Looking forward to the Geosatpro to resolve this. I'm waiting for it...