12 Foot Unimesh Questions

[wvman]

I have a question that doesn't apply to your feed alignment tool. I recently picked up a 12 foot Unimesh dish. Sunday, I put it on the pole and replaced the old feed assembly with a Titanium dual output LNBF. The Dish was moved in one piece and it was located about 5 miles from my location as the crow flies. I installed a motor arm and moved the dish up and down in very small increments, and wasn't able to acquire a signal. I used a receiver that had already been tuned in on one of my other dishes.

Last evening, I took off the Titanium and installed a 25K LNBF I had left over from the old C-Band days. I again swept the dish and located a signal on the Grit MUX on Galaxy 19. I tweaked and tuned on the dish for the better part of an hour, and the best I could get was 71% on the signal quality. I was a bit surprised that I got the same quality on this 12 footer and I have on my 7 1/2 footer. Since it had been in operation at the old location, I just assumed the elevation bar and offset angle was right.

Do you have any idea what the signal level should be in order to receive the MPEG 4 HD channels on this satellite. I have not tried to readjust the elevation and offset at this point. Those adjustments are pretty rusty as this dish sat in a meadow just off the river bank. Any suggestions? BTW, let me know when you get the polarity tool finished, I'd like one.

 

[hank123]

Have you tried to hit 3980h/30000? I get 77%
3940h/30000 I get 85%

 

[Titanium]

Signal Quality meter readings are uncalibrated post error correction measurements and can not be compared between different models and even firmware updates on the same STB. You would need a meter or a tuner with software that displays Signal to Noise Ratios.

Use this calculator to experiment with all of the variables to establish the necessary link margins for reliable service.
http://www.satellite-calculations.com/Satellite/Eb_No.htm
Change a few values such as Carrier to Noise or the FEC to calculate the link budget at the bottom. The higher the link budget value, the better the reliability.

 

[wvman]

Signal Quality meter readings are uncalibrated post error correction measurements and can not be compared between different models and even firmware updates on the same STB. You would need a meter or a tuner with software that displays Signal to Noise Ratios.

Use this calculator to experiment with all of the variables to establish the necessary link margins for reliable service.
http://www.satellite-calculations.com/Satellite/Eb_No.htm
Change a few values such as Carrier to Noise or the FEC to calculate the link budget at the bottom. The higher the link budget value, the better the reliability.

I scanned the transponder and even manually entered a couple channels and got nothing. I haven't checked the elevation bar yet to see where it's at or the offset angle. Just assumed it was correct since it was installed a few miles away and had worked for years with the current settings. As a matter of fact, I haven't tried to run the arc yet to see if it's tracked in. I just got this thing up Sunday and have been working on it in the dark after work of an evening. I'll work on it again this weekend.

 

[. Raine]

Whomever had the dish before you may have set something wrong, or messed with it and gave up, left it messed up. This past summer I put my 12' onto a mount that came from a dish a few miles from here and it was wonky until I realized that they had the elevation arm on the mount wrong. You probably should double check settings on yours, just to be sure it's setup right. Most dishes will work with things messed up a bit, just might not work all that good.

I noticed the Q levels on most transponders on that 12' are the same or nearly the same as on my 9' dish and at first I was really bummed out about it, that dish has a lot of work in it. But, the 12' will keep receiving stations in inclement weather that the 9' loses and the 12' also pulls in weaker transponders that the 9' has trouble with. Could be the same way with your dish, maybe. Both dishes have Titanuim PLL's on them.

 

[wvman]

Whomever had the dish before you may have set something wrong, or messed with it and gave up, left it messed up. This past summer I put my 12' onto a mount that came from a dish a few miles from here and it was wonky until I realized that they had the elevation arm on the mount wrong. You probably should double check settings on yours, just to be sure it's setup right. Most dishes will work with things messed up a bit, just might not work all that good.

I noticed the Q levels on most transponders on that 12' are the same or nearly the same as on my 9' dish and at first I was really bummed out about it, that dish has a lot of work in it. But, the 12' will keep receiving stations in inclement weather that the 9' loses and the 12' also pulls in weaker transponders that the 9' has trouble with. Could be the same way with your dish, maybe. Both dishes have Titanuim PLL's on them.

I hadn't spent the time on it that I wanted to, but last evening, I hooked up two other receivers I had on hand. The HDVR3500 wouldn't find the channels during a scan. One of the Freesat V7's scanned them in, but there was a problem with the audio. It sounded like the audio was off frequency. You could hear it, but you couldn't clean it up. I tried the other V7 and it scanned them in and the audio was just fine. Not sure if the first receiver scanned the audio wrong, or if there's a problem with the receiver. I may do a factory reset and try it again.

I gained 10% on the signal quality with the V7. The other channels on this satellite showed 71% signal quality one the HDVR1200 and the V7 shows 81%, but it will receive the channels. That's a definite plus.

 

[wvman]

Whomever had the dish before you may have set something wrong, or messed with it and gave up, left it messed up. This past summer I put my 12' onto a mount that came from a dish a few miles from here and it was wonky until I realized that they had the elevation arm on the mount wrong. You probably should double check settings on yours, just to be sure it's setup right. Most dishes will work with things messed up a bit, just might not work all that good.

I noticed the Q levels on most transponders on that 12' are the same or nearly the same as on my 9' dish and at first I was really bummed out about it, that dish has a lot of work in it. But, the 12' will keep receiving stations in inclement weather that the 9' loses and the 12' also pulls in weaker transponders that the 9' has trouble with. Could be the same way with your dish, maybe. Both dishes have Titanuim PLL's on them.

That's a definite possibility. I haven't had time to check all that. Since it gets dark before I get home of an evening, I haven't messed with it since last weekend. I have a digital protractor and I will check the offset and elevation this weekend. This dish has sat idle for a long time. I had to cut the mounting bolts for the actuator with a saw's all. Every bolt on it was rusted really bad. I didn't attempt the elevation bar because of that. I have every bolt on it soaking with penetrating oil before I'll try them.

I did get lucky with the other 2 dishes I got for free. One of them had an actuator arm on it that was in good shape. It had an accordion boot on the tube and it looked like new, so I didn't have to buy an actuator arm for this dish. I'm planning on leaving 3 dishes stationary and use diseqc switches in order to tune all 3 dishes simultaneously and bring the channels in on one cable to each receiver. I'll leave the one dish with the capabilities to move in case I want to look at another satellite.

Almost everything we watch is on Galaxy 19, 16 and SES-1, so that will work out fine for us. It should be a relatively simple setup, but I may have a question or two about hooking up the switches and what settings to use. I still have to install one other dish, but that's no big deal unless the weather takes a turn for the worse and if it does, I have Prodelin dish up back on a pole I could hook up if necessary until spring. I would have used it by now, but there's two 80 foot pine trees laying on the ground between it and the house. I'll keep pecking along and I will eventually get where I want to be. I'm dish poor and still collecting them.

 

[. Raine]

I hadn't spent the time on it that I wanted to, but last evening, I hooked up two other receivers I had on hand. The HDVR3500 wouldn't find the channels during a scan. One of the Freesat V7's scanned them in, but there was a problem with the audio. It sounded like the audio was off frequency. You could hear it, but you couldn't clean it up. I tried the other V7 and it scanned them in and the audio was just fine. Not sure if the first receiver scanned the audio wrong, or if there's a problem with the receiver. I may do a factory reset and try it again.

I gained 10% on the signal quality with the V7. The other channels on this satellite showed 71% signal quality one the HDVR1200 and the V7 shows 81%, but it will receive the channels. That's a definite plus.

My 3500 doesn't have any problems with the channels on 97W, but I'm using 992 firmware, so things might be different between our receivers. There is a problem on 101W with the 3500s not scanning in Decades right.

I've had the distorted audio before too, it's been quite a while but I think just a reboot straightened it out.

It's dark by the time I get home here too, I'm in the same boat as you there, I know what you mean! One of our horses chewed on the Lnb on my 121W dish and broke the holder and my motorized Ku is stuck on 87W, but it's dark when I have time during the week and I haven't had any free time lately on the weekend to spend on them.

 

[wvman]

My 3500 doesn't have any problems with the channels on 97W, but I'm using 992 firmware, so things might be different between our receivers. There is a problem on 101W with the 3500s not scanning in Decades right.

I've had the distorted audio before too, it's been quite a while but I think just a reboot straightened it out.

It's dark by the time I get home here too, I'm in the same boat as you there, I know what you mean! One of our horses chewed on the Lnb on my 121W dish and broke the holder and my motorized Ku is stuck on 87W, but it's dark when I have time during the week and I haven't had any free time lately on the weekend to spend on them.

I can scan in Decades, Movies & H&I just fine, but here's what happens occasionally. Right now there channels are working just fine, but next week or tomorrow they'll start losing the signal. When it does that, the signal will constantly keep going out and back in and you can't watch any of them. Now I have a problem with COZI, the Puerto Rican channel and THIS on Galaxy 16. They're doing what H&I, Movies and Decades did earlier. I don't know what changed. I never had a problem with any of the channels on Galaxy 16, ever on a 71/2 half foot Unimesh.

Just now I checked MeTV & Movies on Galaxy 16 and they're breaking up. Damn crazy it is. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. I don't have to worry about anything chewing on my dishes or cables. They are inside a 6 foot chain link fence. I'll tinker around with the 12 footer this weekend if it isn't blue cold outside and see if I can get the signal quality higher than 72%. I don't do cold well these days.

 

[. Raine]

I can scan in Decades, Movies & H&I just fine, but here's what happens occasionally. Right now there channels are working just fine, but next week or tomorrow they'll start losing the signal. When it does that, the signal will constantly keep going out and back in and you can't watch any of them. Now I have a problem with COZI, the Puerto Rican channel and THIS on Galaxy 16. They're doing what H&I, Movies and Decades did earlier. I don't know what changed. I never had a problem with any of the channels on Galaxy 16, ever on a 71/2 half foot Unimesh.

Just now I checked MeTV & Movies on Galaxy 16 and they're breaking up. Damn crazy it is. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. I don't have to worry about anything chewing on my dishes or cables. They are inside a 6 foot chain link fence. I'll tinker around with the 12 footer this weekend if it isn't blue cold outside and see if I can get the signal quality higher than 72%. I don't do cold well these days.

I and others have been having trouble with This and Cozi on 99W lately so you're not alone there, it seems there may be something wrong on the uplink end there. JFOK started a thread on this a week or so ago. There messed up here right now and the problem seems to be getting worse the longer it goes on. I've been watching Cozi on 103W Ku and I get Cozi and This OTA, so it's not a problem here. I haven't had any problems with Me or Movies on 101 or 99W.

Decades scans in all right on your 3500? Eugene must've fixed that issue in one of the later firmwares, it use to be Decades would scan in but actually be H&I, so there would be two H&I channels and no Decades.

Here in CT they're predicting cold and snow for the weekend, so I probably won't be able to do any tinkering either.

 

[wvman]

I and others have been having trouble with This and Cozi on 99W lately so you're not alone there, it seems there may be something wrong on the uplink end there. JFOK started a thread on this a week or so ago. There messed up here right now and the problem seems to be getting worse the longer it goes on. I've been watching Cozi on 103W Ku and I get Cozi and This OTA, so it's not a problem here. I haven't had any problems with Me or Movies on 101 or 99W.

Decades scans in all right on your 3500? Eugene must've fixed that issue in one of the later firmwares, it use to be Decades would scan in but actually be H&I, so there would be two H&I channels and no Decades.

Here in CT they're predicting cold and snow for the weekend, so I probably won't be able to do any tinkering either.

I was having trouble with Decades, Movies and H&I, but now those are coming in perfect on the 1200, but that may not be the case later. The FreeSat V7 will scan those as well, but the audio still stutters on Buzzr, Grit and Justice. I haven't looked to see if there's an update for the V7 yet. I did update one of the HDVR3500 and it seems to work a little better. However, COZI, THIS and the Puerto Rican channel breaks up on all three receivers right now, so it must be a problem on their end. Maybe it will fix itself later. We'll see.

 

[wvman]

Signal Quality meter readings are uncalibrated post error correction measurements and can not be compared between different models and even firmware updates on the same STB. You would need a meter or a tuner with software that displays Signal to Noise Ratios.

Use this calculator to experiment with all of the variables to establish the necessary link margins for reliable service.
http://www.satellite-calculations.com/Satellite/Eb_No.htm
Change a few values such as Carrier to Noise or the FEC to calculate the link budget at the bottom. The higher the link budget value, the better the reliability.

Brian, here's a dish I've had my eye on for a while. It's a 9 foot spun aluminum from DH Antenna. They claim it will perform like a 10 footer, but I've never used one of their dishes. Do you think it will perform well enough to receive the 97W HD Channels on TP-14 3980? What's your take on it? It's about a $1400 investment, not including shipping. It does come with a tuned feed horn.

 

[Titanium]

While DH builds a good one piece dish, a 9' dish still performs like a 9' dish. I am not aware DH has ever manufactured a feedhorn. I am sure that a matched feedhorn is a Chaparral, Seavy or other sourced product.

With the increasing requirements for the higher modulations, I personally wouldn't invest in an undersized reflector unless you want to throw money at the problem and just see what sticks.

Your current dishes may not be 2 degree compliant, age or assembly related warped parabola or a misaligned feedhorn. Confirm 2 degree compliance, string test to verify correct parabola and calculate the FD and FL on your current dishes, the set the scalar and the feedhorn placement in the main lobe convergence, minimize side lobes and optimize cross polarity separation.

A spectrum analyzer would be especially useful. I was on the roof the other day experimenting with the feedhorn and scalar placement for 97w. I found that by detuning the feed by moving only 1/2", the sidelobe signal increase caused the 3920 transponder to drop below threshold SNR. Found that by moving the FD, but keeping the the feedhorn opening at the correct distance I could further attenuate the sidelobe interference for 3920 and increase the Signal Quality considerably.

By optimizing the FD setting for the performance on this specific transponder, the mainlobe performance was reduced for most other frequencies and satellite positions