Social Feed

I finally found it by blind scanning the blind signals without any QS readings. I first had 33 - 36% QS and a solid video but once the sun warmed the dish the signal progressively dropped to 0% but before that I tweaked the freq's & SR's and found the best for me is 11964 v 11263. Then as I was flipping through the channels the signal came back with a pixelating video at about 20% QS. I imagine the night hours may be better to view these.

It's odd how the Freq's & SR's vary for different locations, probably because they are so weak and touchy. At least I found the bird again. Thanks for all the help guy's.

these feeds seem weak for everyone. on my 1m they are just above the fringe here in central canada. even on the 1.2m the quality doesnt increase much. since this is the eastern side of my ku arc i sometimes get trick into thinking i need to tweak the dish more but it never helps.

crackt out,.

crackt said:

these feeds seem weak for everyone. on my 1m they are just above the fringe here in central canada. even on the 1.2m the quality doesnt increase much. since this is the eastern side of my ku arc i sometimes get trick into thinking i need to tweak the dish more but it never helps.

crackt out,.

Click to expand...

The weird thing is that these transponders are so variable. Over the years, I keep reading posts about various channels saying that they are weak one week, and strong the next week, but when I look at spectrum scans, they are almost exactly the same, so I've always disregarded posts about transponders changing in power, except for occasions when there is heavy rain near the uplink site.

But this SCETV thing, I was watching it a few days ago, and getting a fairly strong signal, well above my threshold, then zap, and I lost lock. I had done a spectrum scan prior to starting watching, so I repeated it, and the signal strength had dropped by at least 1/3. Every other transponder on the sat had the same signal level as before, except for the SCETV signal.
Then, yesterday, upon reading this thread, I tuned it in again. Again, nice strong signal, well above threshold, then, after watching a nice show for about an hour or so, all of a sudden, no lock. I tried the rest of the afternoon, and into the evening, to get the signal back, but never got it to lock. Tune it in this morning, and nice strong lock. Yesterday MAY have been weather related though, as there were some storms moving through SC, but you would have thought that it would have found some break in the storm when I'd get a signal.

McGuyver said:

I finally found it by blind scanning the blind signals without any QS readings. I first had 33 - 36% QS and a solid video but once the sun warmed the dish the signal progressively dropped to 0% but before that I tweaked the freq's & SR's and found the best for me is 11964 v 11263. Then as I was flipping through the channels the signal came back with a pixelating video at about 20% QS. I imagine the night hours may be better to view these.

It's odd how the Freq's & SR's vary for different locations, probably because they are so weak and touchy. At least I found the bird again. Thanks for all the help guy's.

Click to expand...

Re freqs & SRs varying for "different locations". They don't. The LO freq on different LNBs will drift with temperature a bit, and this can make the freqs that your receiver sees to be off by 1 to 2 MHz if you have ANY of the consumer LNBFs or a low end LNB. With the higher priced LNBs, they can be stable within a few tenths of a MHz or even better than that for expensive PLL LNBs or LNBs that have a temperature controlled oven. I had ONE LNB once that was off by 5 MHz, but usually they are better than that.
The SRs, on the other hand generally do not vary. I think you are always best off by keying in the exact SR, if it is known to be correct. In this case, the NIT of the SCETV signal lists the SR as 11280, so you can be pretty sure that this is the correct SR. The NITs don't always have the correct info, but usually when it is incorrect, it's pretty obvious, like being entered as zero. But in this case, when it's in there at 11280, which is also what people seem to be reporting, I think 11280 is the correct SR, and you are probably making things worse by using 11263. If that truely is your best lock, then I think your receiver has a problem. Yes, receivers like the Mercury will come up with incorrect SRs on blind scans, but usually if you enter the correct SR it will work, and I think work better.
I have seen one case where there was an SR listed as 20000 in the NIT of a transponder, and upon entering that, the channels were breaking up, and so I measured the SR, and found that it was 20009. At first no-one believed this in another forum where I posted the info, but eventually it was confirmed by a few other people, and eventually the SR went back to where it was supposed to be. Apparently they had a problem at the uplink. But generally, if they put real numbers in the NIT, that are close to what you're seeing posted, then you can usually trust that.

Thanks B.J. for the educating info, it may have been the fact that 2 days prior to locating the 63W I replaced the LNBF with a new DMSI JSC321S and as I mentioned in my post, the Sun was warming up the dish which seemed to have an effect and lost the signal intermittently. I am waiting for the arrival of a DMX522 for testing and I'll be able to compare. The SR 11263 that I settled with wasn't likely having any influence one way or the other at that time of tweaking, the sig was too bad and fluxuating to make a proper evaluation. I believe (as you said) that the freq was more notable. I couldn't continue my tweaking and evaluation after losing the sig so then I reported what I had found at that time. There will be another day for testing if I can lock again.

BTW, don't take anything I say as fact, it's all just opinion, usually based on observations that are often misleading.
Reason I said what I said about the SRs though is that the SRs aren't affected by the LNB. Ie the LNB being off will bring the signal to your receiver off freq, however the SR will still be right on. The oscillators in your receiver can be off, but since receivers are inside with more constant temp, so you usually don't expect them to be off as much.

However one other thing, showing how confusing comparisons of freq and SR changes can be, some receivers don't seem to care whether the SR or the freq is off, while other receivers need to be very close to the proper parameters. Different receivers seem to behave a lot differently.

I was experimenting with 3 of my receivers just now. My Twinhan 1020a needs to be very close in freq, usually within 2 or 3 MHz on a low SR signal, and 4 or 5 MHz on a high SR signal, whereas my TT3200 can tune a transponder when off by over 20 MHz on a high SR signal. My Genpix will tune when off by about 15 MHz on a high SR signal, but is even tighter than the Twinhan on low SR signals.
Being off in SR is more confusing. I was just playing with my TT3200 and my Genpix, and I was able to get the Genpix to tune almost 400 off on a 29270 SR channel, but my TT3200 wouldn't lock when I was off by only 19. This despite the fact that the 3200 will lock when significantly further off in frequency. The Twinhan was intermediate between the two. On these receivers, until you are near the point where it won't lock, these receivers performed fairly well, whereas my old Fortec Lifetime, would appear to have a good lock, but the picture would break up due to errors, when only off by a small amount on SR.

Another aspect that makes some of these observations unreliable, however is that I have seen occasions where if I lock on a transponder, then slowly increase the SR, I can get it to lock fairly far off the correct value, and yet if I start off on the same wrong value that I was able to lock on when gradually changing SR, it won't lock. So when comparing things, I usually try to tune in a significantly different transponder between each test, so that each test is more independent.

Anyway, in short, these frequency/SR comparisons can lead different people using different receivers into different conclusions, and sometimes the way you do the comparison greatly affects your observations.

Hi B.J.,

Those results are quite interesting and gave me thoughts of how might switches in general affect issues like these? In this hobby I'm learning more each day and have just learned something new today after troubleshooting my new modification of a Tri-LNB on my 8 ft BUD. If you haven't already seen it, take a look for reference to what I'm talking about, note the last post with photos.
http://www.satelliteguys.us/c-band-satellite-discussion/205836-tri-lnb-setup-3.html

After getting it all installed and testing the 91 & 95 LNB's which have good results, I neglected to test the 103 LNB with my field test TV/Rec'vr while outside. After calling it a night I powered up the living room stb and found only one TP live on the 103 and it was in the mid 80's%, all others were dead. My first thought was that the additional LNB's were blocking the signal somehow, I thought that all my efforts were in vain. So today I first pulled the 91 LNB off (2 mounting screws) and turned on the living room stb and there it was, I had one of the TP's back but after switching channels then back it wouldn't lock. I then thought to check switches because I just added a Chieta HD2041 to the run which was inline to the 22KHz on the 103 LNB (DMSI BSC621 C/Ku) that switches the 95 LNB. So I substituted the 22KHz on the BSC621 with a new Chieta 22KHz I had and BINGO! Everything was working so I reinstalled the 91 LNB and tested again and it's all working flawlessly. Funny thing is, the BSC621 22KHz sw worked fine before adding the Chieta HD2041 diseqc but somehow it didn't like the BSC621 22K sw. Having one strong TP alive on the 103 indicated that it might not be a blocked signal issue. In this case it appears that possibly frequencies were touchy within the switching system. Does any of this make sense? It's just a guess as to why it acted this way but a new 22KHz switch did resolve the problem. I ordered 2 new EMP Centauri 4X1 diseqc and they're due in tomorrow. I thought to test one with the BSC621 22KHz reintroduced to the setup and see if maybe the Chieta is the finicky culprit. Either way, I'll be sticking with the new EMP Centauri, I understand they're unsurpassable. Again... Thanks for your input