To start with, I am a complete newbie novice at this hobby. I lurked in here last fall, trying to pick up as much information I could before I launched into the project of trying to set my system up.
This is my second post. My first I mis-posted in the sticky section, and Radar kindly responded to that question very fully. It had to do with USALs, setting up the motor to know where I was.
I have a Sadoun 90t dish, combined with a powertech 380 motor to drive it. I have an invacom QPH-031 lnb. I have one diseque switch to absorb the two rg6 connections coming off of the Invacom, into a single rg6 to the powertech, and then about 70 feet of rg6 to my azbox hd premium plus receiver. I am running an hdmi from the receiver directly into the tv.
I am at Lo 72w, Lat 41 n (on the end long island, new york).
I mounted the dish on my roof, about 20' off the ground. The mast is 2" galvanized pipe. The pipe is lag screwed into 4x4 post that I mounted flush to the side of my house. I was very careful about installing the mast, and I can say with authority that it is dead plumb all the way around.
I set the lattitude on the motor, and made the compensation on the dish elevation. I started at true south, which for me is magnetic 194 degrees.
It did take some fine tuning still, but with the little satellite finder, I have reached the point now where I am getting good signals on all the satellites that I am attempting to hit.
I have found that when I first go to a satellite in azbox, that I do not have quality on any transponders. But if I blind scan the satellite, I have very good quality on most of the transponders, ranging from 87 to 100 percent.
Initially, I just said "yes", and downloaded the whole satellite, and got hundreds of stations. All scrambled except for "amber", and "info". I was pleased that I saw my first picture, a movie preview station for a canada service.
But there were no FTA stations in the whole lot. I then manually got rid of the stations that I did not want. When I got rid of the last one, azbox said "no signal". I ended up reinstalling the fw, and that problem went away.
I know realize also that going through data reset I can eliminate all the stations, and get a clean start that way. I did that once also, and that was clean and did not lead to a "no signal" problem.
I have learned to be more selective. Now I blind scan, and say "no" when it asks if I want to save the stations. After doing that, I go and selectively look at individual transponders that correspond to lyngsat data, or fta lists of where particular stations may be.
However I have found that what the transponder indicated on lyngsat to be the location of a station, eg PBS on AMC 21 (12140, 12180) that those transponders are not present in my tp scan of AMC 21. And the ones that are "close", have no quality at all. The quality are all tp's that are commercial/scrambled channels.
So, I am perplexed, bemused and confused, and would appreciate any help I can get from the community.
One thought I had was that maybe my primary orientation at "zero" was off enough that I was not hitting the sats I thought I was hitting. Is there a way to identify what satellite I am on not based on pre-loaded information in azbox?
Bottom line: I am not getting available fta channels, and need help problem solving at this point.
TIA. Ron
This is my second post. My first I mis-posted in the sticky section, and Radar kindly responded to that question very fully. It had to do with USALs, setting up the motor to know where I was.
I have a Sadoun 90t dish, combined with a powertech 380 motor to drive it. I have an invacom QPH-031 lnb. I have one diseque switch to absorb the two rg6 connections coming off of the Invacom, into a single rg6 to the powertech, and then about 70 feet of rg6 to my azbox hd premium plus receiver. I am running an hdmi from the receiver directly into the tv.
I am at Lo 72w, Lat 41 n (on the end long island, new york).
I mounted the dish on my roof, about 20' off the ground. The mast is 2" galvanized pipe. The pipe is lag screwed into 4x4 post that I mounted flush to the side of my house. I was very careful about installing the mast, and I can say with authority that it is dead plumb all the way around.
I set the lattitude on the motor, and made the compensation on the dish elevation. I started at true south, which for me is magnetic 194 degrees.
It did take some fine tuning still, but with the little satellite finder, I have reached the point now where I am getting good signals on all the satellites that I am attempting to hit.
I have found that when I first go to a satellite in azbox, that I do not have quality on any transponders. But if I blind scan the satellite, I have very good quality on most of the transponders, ranging from 87 to 100 percent.
Initially, I just said "yes", and downloaded the whole satellite, and got hundreds of stations. All scrambled except for "amber", and "info". I was pleased that I saw my first picture, a movie preview station for a canada service.
But there were no FTA stations in the whole lot. I then manually got rid of the stations that I did not want. When I got rid of the last one, azbox said "no signal". I ended up reinstalling the fw, and that problem went away.
I know realize also that going through data reset I can eliminate all the stations, and get a clean start that way. I did that once also, and that was clean and did not lead to a "no signal" problem.
I have learned to be more selective. Now I blind scan, and say "no" when it asks if I want to save the stations. After doing that, I go and selectively look at individual transponders that correspond to lyngsat data, or fta lists of where particular stations may be.
However I have found that what the transponder indicated on lyngsat to be the location of a station, eg PBS on AMC 21 (12140, 12180) that those transponders are not present in my tp scan of AMC 21. And the ones that are "close", have no quality at all. The quality are all tp's that are commercial/scrambled channels.
So, I am perplexed, bemused and confused, and would appreciate any help I can get from the community.
One thought I had was that maybe my primary orientation at "zero" was off enough that I was not hitting the sats I thought I was hitting. Is there a way to identify what satellite I am on not based on pre-loaded information in azbox?
Bottom line: I am not getting available fta channels, and need help problem solving at this point.
TIA. Ron
