Comments from a newbie to FTA

[Brct203]

You've got Ku pretty well covered. There's a little bit ITC for me on 114.9W, 77W and 72.7W. I can see further east up to about 70W but I can't actually find anything to view east of 72.7W.

77W for sure, should be an easy target. I think the Ontario Parliament channel on 72.7W might be a lot more difficult, as I think it's on a beam that does not extend much south of the Canadian border.

 

[comfortably_numb]

Does anyone know if the Bullseye TCXO can function as a dual-output LNB?

 

[primestar31]

Does anyone know if the Bullseye TCXO can function as a dual-output LNB?

I don't think so. Check what I've bolded below. Second port is for frequency reference only:

Specification Bullseye LNB PLL TCXO
Reference: Bullseye 10 kHz BE01
LNB type: PLL
PLL: 2 PPM* TCXO 25Mhz
Output 1 (green): 739Mhz for QO-100 use on the primary female F connector (green)
Output 2 (red): 25 MHz on the secondary female F connector (red)
Input frequency: 10489 - 12750 MHz
LO frequency 9750/10600 MHz
LO frequency stability at 23°C: +/- 10 kHz / or +/- 30 kHz from -20°C to +60°C
LNB gain: 50 - 66 dB
Output frequency: 739 - 1950 MHz (low band) and 1100 - 2150 (high band)
Return loss: 8dB (739 - 1950 MHz) and 10dB (1100 - 2150 MHz)
Noise factor: 0.5dB
Vertical polarization voltage: 11.5 to 14V
Horizontal polarization voltage: 16 to 19V
LNB support diameter: 40mm
Red cover diameter: 64mm
CE standards, Rohs, FCC
2 years warranty

 

[cyberham]

...72.7W might be a lot more difficult, as I think it's on a beam that does not extend much south of the Canadian border.

Can you not receive it? If not, then I guess it's on the Canada beam despite what Lyngsat says. Anyway, it's about as exciting as one of those Nexstar colour bar channels.

 

[Brct203]

Can you not receive it? If not, then I guess it's on the Canada beam despite what Lyngsat says. Anyway, it's about as exciting as one of those Nexstar colour bar channels.

I can but it's much much weaker than the other transponders (by about 7dB if I remember correctly). So unless it's just a very weak transponder on CONUS beam, I'm thinking it might just be that I'm a bit outside of the footprint. The spectrum plot below is taken with a linear LNBF, so of course a proper circular one would look slightly different.

 

[Brct203]

Does anyone know if the Bullseye TCXO can function as a dual-output LNB?

I doubt it... as far as I know, the 2nd connector is only used for monitoring the LO frequency

 

[cyberham]

I can but it's much much weaker than the other transponders (by about 7dB if I remember correctly)...

You must have a non-FTA receiver also. From memory, I don't think I receive any other tps on that sat, I assumed, since they are Turbo.

 

[Brct203]

You must have a non-FTA receiver also. From memory, I don't think I receive any other tps on that sat, I assumed, since they are Turbo.

my receivers indeed won't recognize those Dish transponders, even if I use a circular LNBF, and I can only see them on the spectrum analyzer and judge the difference visually on the spectrum plot. And yes OntParl is also the only thing I receive on that satellite.

 

[k4otl]

Is BVN on 117w stronger than the BYU TP for most? I have trouble locking BYU on my (admittedly undersized) motorized dish. The weather has to be darn near perfect for it. 123W is so much stronger in general and 87W comes in good enough. Florida Channel on 87W is borderline most of the time right now.

 

[Brct203]

Is BVN on 117w stronger than the BYU TP for most? I have trouble locking BYU on my (admittedly undersized) motorized dish. The weather has to be darn near perfect for it. 123W is so much stronger in general and 87W comes in good enough. Florida Channel on 87W is borderline most of the time right now.

BYU is actually a bit stronger than BVN. However, the big difference is the FEC - BVN is 1/2 in QPSK, so it's about as tolerant of weak signal as it gets. It needs only 1dB to lock. On the other hand, BYU is FEC 2/3 in 8PSK, and that means it needs at least 6.6dB to lock.

Right now I'm getting 2.6dB on BVN, which means stable reception, and I am getting 4 dB on BYU, which means I'm not receiving BYU at the moment

note that BVN is on its way out, I think there was an announcement that BVN was ending all satellite distribution in favor of streaming