As you may remember, Michael (KE4EST) and Casey (from HyperMegaSat) recently ran a giveaway contest, and the prize was an Edision LNBF. The contest came with a catch: the winner had to commit to writing a review of the LNBF. I was the lucky winner, so now is the time to uphold my end of the deal, and here is my review of the LNBF.
I think we are all familiar with Edision as a brand of great Enigma2 receivers, but it appears they also make LNBFs (and many other things, actually).
The Edision SL-2 is a universal, single-output LNBF. It has the usual 9750 and 10600 LO frequencies, selected by 22kHz tone. It promises a 0.1dB noise figure - which seems fairly standard these days, for what it’s worth.
While the LNBF is overall quite short, the area that goes in the holder is a bit longer than on most, which allows for a bit more adjustment of the focal point, or leaves room for a multifeed retrofit bracket. Definitely a good thing. Talking of multifeed, the diameter of the scalar area is rather large, which could be a limiting factor in multifeed setups.
I figured that installing the LNBF and showing a screenshot of a random channel with signal quality would not make a very compelling review (as we all know that there are many other factors at play), so I went a bit further. I went through my boxes of satellite things and gathered a few LNBFs, and did a comparison test.
Setup:
- FortecStar 90cm dish, not motorized
- Edision OSMIO+ receiver running TNAP 4.2
- RTL-SDR dongle with SDRSharp
- power-blocking splitter (for use with the SDR dongle)
List of LNBFs being compared:
- Inverto Black Ultra
- Inverto Home Pro PLL
- Edision SL-2
- GeoSatPro UL1-PLL
- X2 IT-01 single
- Sharp BS1R8EL100A
- Maverick MK1-PLL
- Sadoun KUL1
(in that order in the picture from top left to bottom right)
All are universal except the Maverick and Sadoun. The Sharp and the Sadoun LNBFs are from salvaged dishes, I don’t know how old they are.
I tested with some fairly common transponders/channels on some of the most popular FTA satellites available to North-American hobbyists.
Procedure: one satellite at a time, I ran one LNBF at a time, fine-tuning the elevation and azimuth each time, as well as focal position and skew.
I used the “signal finder” app in the receiver to select the transponder and measure the signal quality. Then I swapped the LNBF and fine tuned again and measured, and so on...
Note that while I did this to the best of my ability, we should keep in mind that this is not a highly scientific or rigorous test, and might have a few inaccuracies as I was aiming the dish manually (and we all know that’s not so easy), and while the weather was nice, with mostly blue sky, there was occasional thin clouds that might have had a small attenuating effect on some measurements. Also I added the GeoSatPro LNBF after I had already tested on a few satellites, hence the missing numbers
Here are the results (signal quality in dB):
All LNBFs gave very acceptable results.
While the Inverto Black Ultra gave the best results on every single test, the Edision was a close second, tied with the Inverto Home Pro
One thing I noticed is that some of the older LNBFs (X2 and Sadoun, if I remember correctly) had quality reading that were a bit jumpy by a few decimal points, while the Edision, GSP and Invertos were more stable. Not sure that it matters though.
For the next step, I wanted to check the accuracy of the 10600 local oscillator of the Edision LNBF and compare it to a few others. So I aimed for 103W, which has a beacon on 11701 MHz Vertical. I inserted a splitter which has power-passing only on one branch, so that the receiver would power the LNBF and I would get the L-band RF signal without the DC voltage on the other output, and hooked up my RTL-SDR and my laptop. I used SDR# to visualize and measure the frequency of the beacon. The receiver was tuned to NHK World.
In theory, the beacon should be on 11701.0-10600=1101.0 MHz
Inverto Black Ultra: 1100.55 MHz (so LO=10600.45 MHz)
Inverto Home Pro: 1100.70 MHz (so LO=10600.30 MHz)
Edision SL-2: 1101.04 MHz (so LO=10599.96 MHz)
GeoSatPro UL1-PLL: 1101.12 (so LO=10599.88 MHz)
This might sound like it’s rather unimportant, but it can have an impact in 2 cases:
- very low SR, narrow signals. If the signal uses barely 1 MHz of spectrum,, the accuracy of tuning to the right frequency is critical as any deviation could entirely miss the transponder. For a more common 20k or 30k symb/sec signal, it does not matter so much.
- identifying satellites using the beacon frequencies. Obviously if the reading is off, that makes it much more difficult.
Here the winner is clearly the Edision LNBF.
I have to mention however that some of the other LNBFs are a few years old, so that might have a small impact. But still, the accuracy of the LO of the Edision LNBF was really impressive.
So what’s the big picture? Well I’d say that the Edision SL-2 is clearly a winner. While the Inverto Black Ultra gave slightly better signal quality, the LO accuracy of the Edision was a big plus.
Keep in mind also that – as far as I know – the Inverto LNBFs are not commercialized in North America, making them a rather impractical choice (I bought mines during visits to family in Europe).
So altogether, the Edision looks like a perfect choice, and is available at a very reasonable cost.
The Edision LNBF is also made in twin, quad, quatro and octo versions, although I have not seen those at Hypermegasat.com
Thank you Casey for offering this LNBF and giving me a chance to test it and use it!
I think we are all familiar with Edision as a brand of great Enigma2 receivers, but it appears they also make LNBFs (and many other things, actually).
The Edision SL-2 is a universal, single-output LNBF. It has the usual 9750 and 10600 LO frequencies, selected by 22kHz tone. It promises a 0.1dB noise figure - which seems fairly standard these days, for what it’s worth.
While the LNBF is overall quite short, the area that goes in the holder is a bit longer than on most, which allows for a bit more adjustment of the focal point, or leaves room for a multifeed retrofit bracket. Definitely a good thing. Talking of multifeed, the diameter of the scalar area is rather large, which could be a limiting factor in multifeed setups.
I figured that installing the LNBF and showing a screenshot of a random channel with signal quality would not make a very compelling review (as we all know that there are many other factors at play), so I went a bit further. I went through my boxes of satellite things and gathered a few LNBFs, and did a comparison test.
Setup:
- FortecStar 90cm dish, not motorized
- Edision OSMIO+ receiver running TNAP 4.2
- RTL-SDR dongle with SDRSharp
- power-blocking splitter (for use with the SDR dongle)
List of LNBFs being compared:
- Inverto Black Ultra
- Inverto Home Pro PLL
- Edision SL-2
- GeoSatPro UL1-PLL
- X2 IT-01 single
- Sharp BS1R8EL100A
- Maverick MK1-PLL
- Sadoun KUL1
(in that order in the picture from top left to bottom right)
All are universal except the Maverick and Sadoun. The Sharp and the Sadoun LNBFs are from salvaged dishes, I don’t know how old they are.
I tested with some fairly common transponders/channels on some of the most popular FTA satellites available to North-American hobbyists.
Procedure: one satellite at a time, I ran one LNBF at a time, fine-tuning the elevation and azimuth each time, as well as focal position and skew.
I used the “signal finder” app in the receiver to select the transponder and measure the signal quality. Then I swapped the LNBF and fine tuned again and measured, and so on...
Note that while I did this to the best of my ability, we should keep in mind that this is not a highly scientific or rigorous test, and might have a few inaccuracies as I was aiming the dish manually (and we all know that’s not so easy), and while the weather was nice, with mostly blue sky, there was occasional thin clouds that might have had a small attenuating effect on some measurements. Also I added the GeoSatPro LNBF after I had already tested on a few satellites, hence the missing numbers
Here are the results (signal quality in dB):
Satellite | TP | Channel | Universal 9750/10600 | Universal 9750/10600 | Universal 9750/10600 | Universal 9750/10600 | Universal 9750/10600 | Universal 9750/10600 | Standard 10750 | Standard 10750 |
| | | Inverto Black Ultra | Inverto Home Pro PLL | Edision SL-2 | X-2 single IT-01 | GeoSatPro UL1-PLL | Sharp BS1R8EL100A | Maverick MK1-PLL | Sadoun KUL1 |
125W | 12180 V 30000 | PBS | 13.7 | 13.3 | 13.2 | 13.2 | | 12.9 | 12.9 | 12.0 |
123W | 12078 V 3680 | KBS America | 14.8 | 14.6 | 14.6 | 14.6 | | 14.3 | 14.6 | 14.0 |
103W | 12080 H 29970 | DW TV | 12.0 | 12.0 | 12.0 | 11.8 | | 11.9 | 11.9 | 11.9 |
103W | 12145 V 20000 | NHK World | 15.1 | 14.9 | 14.9 | 14.3 | | 14.5 | 14.2 | 13.6 |
97W | 12053 V 22000 | 2M Monde | 13.6 | 13.6 | 13.2 | 13.0 | | 13.0 | 13.0 | 12.0 |
87W | 11811 H 11150 | LPB | 10.4 | 10.4 | 10.4 | 9.4 | 10.0 | 9.2 | 9.7 | 10.2 |
34.5W | 11595 H 30000 | Franceinfo: | 10.6 | 10.1 | 10.6 | 10.4 | 9.9 | 9.7 | N/A | N/A |
30W | 11884 V 27500 | Cubavision | 14.2 | 13.4 | 13.8 | 13.6 | 12.8 | 13.2 | 13.6 | 13.2 |
All LNBFs gave very acceptable results.
While the Inverto Black Ultra gave the best results on every single test, the Edision was a close second, tied with the Inverto Home Pro
One thing I noticed is that some of the older LNBFs (X2 and Sadoun, if I remember correctly) had quality reading that were a bit jumpy by a few decimal points, while the Edision, GSP and Invertos were more stable. Not sure that it matters though.
For the next step, I wanted to check the accuracy of the 10600 local oscillator of the Edision LNBF and compare it to a few others. So I aimed for 103W, which has a beacon on 11701 MHz Vertical. I inserted a splitter which has power-passing only on one branch, so that the receiver would power the LNBF and I would get the L-band RF signal without the DC voltage on the other output, and hooked up my RTL-SDR and my laptop. I used SDR# to visualize and measure the frequency of the beacon. The receiver was tuned to NHK World.
In theory, the beacon should be on 11701.0-10600=1101.0 MHz
Inverto Black Ultra: 1100.55 MHz (so LO=10600.45 MHz)
Inverto Home Pro: 1100.70 MHz (so LO=10600.30 MHz)
Edision SL-2: 1101.04 MHz (so LO=10599.96 MHz)
GeoSatPro UL1-PLL: 1101.12 (so LO=10599.88 MHz)
This might sound like it’s rather unimportant, but it can have an impact in 2 cases:
- very low SR, narrow signals. If the signal uses barely 1 MHz of spectrum,, the accuracy of tuning to the right frequency is critical as any deviation could entirely miss the transponder. For a more common 20k or 30k symb/sec signal, it does not matter so much.
- identifying satellites using the beacon frequencies. Obviously if the reading is off, that makes it much more difficult.
Here the winner is clearly the Edision LNBF.
I have to mention however that some of the other LNBFs are a few years old, so that might have a small impact. But still, the accuracy of the LO of the Edision LNBF was really impressive.
So what’s the big picture? Well I’d say that the Edision SL-2 is clearly a winner. While the Inverto Black Ultra gave slightly better signal quality, the LO accuracy of the Edision was a big plus.
Keep in mind also that – as far as I know – the Inverto LNBFs are not commercialized in North America, making them a rather impractical choice (I bought mines during visits to family in Europe).
So altogether, the Edision looks like a perfect choice, and is available at a very reasonable cost.
The Edision LNBF is also made in twin, quad, quatro and octo versions, although I have not seen those at Hypermegasat.com
Thank you Casey for offering this LNBF and giving me a chance to test it and use it!
