FSTV on Galaxy 18 ?

[Dee_Ann]

Hi guys!


Since I discovered via the FSTV website that they are openly advising people as to how to pick up their signal on FTA I don't feel afraid to ask about this channel now.

I've been trying to pick up this channel for a few weeks now and have had no luck at all with it.

Lyngsat doesn't list it at all. It seems that they aren't maintaining the site there very well.

Sathint lists the channel on two frequencies.

11830 / 1784 and 11840 / 1784.

It says that 11830 is DVB-S QPSK and 11840 is DVB-S2 8PSK. (I don't understand what this PSK stuff is)

It gives the FEC (I still don't understand what this is) as 2/3.

Despite me not understanding what some of those thing are or what they do, I know enough to set the pc app to match what the website says or it won't work.

Oh, and I am using a 1.2 meter Andrew dish. The pole is absolutely straight, I checked it on all four points and it is very straight.

I got the info from Dishpointer.com to set the direction, tilt and skew.

I used my little meter to find the satellite at 123. That was not hard to do.
I did a blind scan and the following satellites showed up in the scan.
Be aware, I do not have any device that can blind scan S2.

1. Peace TV - 11.969 V / 2.000
2. KBS World - 12.080 V / 3.680 (scrambled)
3. Level 3 Teleport - 12.149 V / 6.111 (black screen)
4. Teleport Denver Enc - 12.177 V / 6.111 (black screen)
5. Channel One - 11.734 H / 13.240 (scrambled)
6. Channel Two - 11.734 H / 13.240 (scrambled)
7. Channel Three-VBA - 11.734 H / 13.240
8. Channel Four - 11.734 H / 13.240 (color bars)
9. Daystar - 11.779 V / 2.848

I blind scanned it with my Coolsat 6000 and got pretty much identical results.

While I had the meter out at the dish I adjusted it more carefully than I have in the past. Only a few days ago I realized that the BER thing is helpful. I believe this one means Bit Error Rate. Google tells me a lower number is better.
A few days ago I noticed that when I move the dish and the picture begins to break up the BER number rises and as the picture improves, it gets better.
Duh....

So, I picked a channel, hit the info button on the meter and adjusted the dish until the BER was zero. In other words it was like 0/24523454 or something like that. I don't recall the number on the right, that number never changed but the one on the left does. So I moved the dish until that number was zero.

I checked the rest of the channels and they are all showing a BER of zero.

I would ASSUME that this means that the dish is very much on target. Right?

I used this BER thing when I moved stuff around last week and had to redo my PBS dish. That's when I began to realize that lower is better and I got a BER of zero on 125. Now, channels that had been marginal are rock solid and snap into place instantly when I change channels. No more breaking up. Even the Montana channels are working really, really well. PBS HD is awesome now, much better than it ever was!

So, all things considered, I am ASSUMING that I have the 1.2m dish aimed properly at 123 and adjusted as best as it can be.

So I go inside and I tell my PC theater app to scan that satellite. It picks up the same things the meter and the Coolsat found on blind scan and that is all. It refuses to see FSTV.

I'm sure there must be an easier way to do this but I sat there and entered ALL the transponder frequencies into the pc one at a time from info I find either in The List or on Lyngsat or on Sathint.

I also entered a bunch of frequencies near the target frequency, such as

11825
11826
11827
11828
11829
11830 (target frequency)
11831
11832
11833
11834
11835

and

11835
11836
11837
11838
11839
11840 (target frequency)
11841
11842
11843
11844
11845


I have seen you guys say to try changing the frequency by a few digits up or down in case the dish isn't 'just right'.. That and the fact that what I scan in doesn't always precisely come out to be the same as what you guys list the frequencies to be. So I do that when I'm trying to find something that I am having trouble finding but others report comes in fine for them.

Being that the pc can not blind scan this is my poor girl's blind scan trick.

And after scanning ALL of those, I went in and changed each one's FEC and rescanned. I went through all the FEC numbers, AUTO, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 4/5, 5/6, 6/7, 7/8, 8/9, 9/10. I also tried all of those combinations and tried the AUTO, QPSK, 8PSK, BPSK, COFDM, 8VSB, T8PSK, T16PSK, 16APSK and 32APSK. I tried every combination of every setting you can imagine and not one of them finds any signal.


But nothing I do works. The only tuner I own that can receive S2 band is the pc tuner.
It's impossible to take the pc outside to the dish.
Another problem with the pc is, you can't tune to the channel until it can find the channel in a scan. In other words, I can't tell the pc to sit on FSTV as a monitor while I move the dish looking for a picture.


What am I doing wrong? Is there some trick I should know to find this elusive channel?
Or is it like the LPB channels? My pc can not see them no matter what but my folks get it just fine on a SMALLER dish that isn't even adjusted as well as mine is but they have an Openbox S9. And no, there is no way in the world I can talk them into loaning me their tuner even for a day. They are really into their FTA and that thing won't be leaving their house, period.


Is there a frequency that my non S2 meter can see that I can try to adjust the dish to that would put me also on the mark for FSTV? Daystar is pretty close, I am wanting 11830 and they are at 11779, Peace TV @ 11969 is not too far from 11840. I would think / ASSUME that if I can get Daystar and Peace with a BER of zero then I should also be able to get FSTV. Right?

Am I going to have to buy a meter than can blindscan S2 band?

This thing is making me bonkers.

Thanks!

 

[skysurfer]

Assuming first that you are using a DVB-S2 receiver and that you've peaked G18 as best as you could using a good signal meter, I think that a 1.2 meter dish may be too small. FSTV is a narrow carrier and it's reasonably weak. I can't get it on my 1.2 meter dish (modded fortec star with invacom LNBF) but I get it fine on my 8'-something birdview solid dish.

I just received a Manhattan receiver and everyone is crowing about it's tuner sensitivity so I'll use this signal to check it out in the next day or two. I will agree with all the crowing if I can lock it on my 1.2 meter whereas my other two DVB-S2 receivers can't lock onto it using that same size dish.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Assuming first that you are using a DVB-S2 receiver and that you've peaked G18 as best as you could using a good signal meter, I think that a 1.2 meter dish may be too small. FSTV is a narrow carrier and it's reasonably weak. I can't get it on my 1.2 meter dish (modded fortec star with invacom LNBF) but I get it fine on my 8'-something birdview solid dish.

I just received a Manhattan receiver and everyone is crowing about it's tuner sensitivity so I'll use this signal to check it out in the next day or two. I will agree with all the crowing if I can lock it on my 1.2 meter whereas my other two DVB-S2 receivers can't lock onto it using that same size dish.

Ok, well, I understand weak but what is this "narrow" signal everyone mentions? I have seen that a few times in other posts.

Now if a 1.2m dish won't pick up FSTV then the next question is, can I convert my 6' C band dish into a 6' ku dish?

 

[Dee_Ann]

I just read on another forum that people are picking up FSTV with old Primestar dishes and other assorted 90cm dishes. I think my 1.2 should be big enough. I'm in SE Texas so I should be able to get the signal.

 

[norman881]

I pick up FSTV here in Washington State on a 0.9m Fortec dish using and Openbox S9.

 

[Dee_Ann]

I pick up FSTV here in Washington State on a 0.9m Fortec dish using and Openbox S9.

Well if you are getting it on a .9 there is no reason why I shouldn't be able to get it on a 1.2m.
So that means I'm either doing something wrong or my stupid pc app stinks. Or something..

 

[Keith Brannen]

Just posted this on the thread in the AZBox forum (this thread is a better place for the discussion):

I get it on an 80cm, but it is just barely above pixelation level on the AZBox. About a month ago it was around 80 (very good) but the last few weeks has collapsed and now hovers around 60 (pixelation starts when it drops into the mid-50's). It had dropped lower, but a little maintenance on the dish brought it up a bit.

FSTV moved back in June to 11840 V 1784, DVB-S2-8PSK, FEC 1/2, pilot 0 (off).

 

[Mr Tony]

Ok, well, I understand weak but what is this "narrow" signal everyone mentions? I have seen that a few times in other posts.

narrow signal means the symbol rate is small. Look at it. Its 1700 something.....that is very narrow

IN an nutshell, the higher the symbol rate, the more bandwidth it takes. Sports feeds (yes we know..you dont like them) that are in HD use a s/r (symbol rate) of 30000. That is a whole transponder (20Mhz...the old analog transponders were all 20mhz)....now they can split that transponder up into 6 "bites" of it...like what news feeds use. They usually use 3978 or 6111 as a symbol rate. You know how hard it can be to get KTEL Telemundo on 79 with its 2170 symbol rate? Now lower that and make it S2. You have to be literally spot on for it to get any kind of signal.

 

[Dee_Ann]

narrow signal means the symbol rate is small. Look at it. Its 1700 something.....that is very narrow

IN an nutshell, the higher the symbol rate, the more bandwidth it takes. Sports feeds (yes we know..you dont like them) that are in HD use a s/r (symbol rate) of 30000. That is a whole transponder (20Mhz...the old analog transponders were all 20mhz)....now they can split that transponder up into 6 "bites" of it...like what news feeds use. They usually use 3978 or 6111 as a symbol rate. You know how hard it can be to get KTEL Telemundo on 79 with its 2170 symbol rate? Now lower that and make it S2. You have to be literally spot on for it to get any kind of signal.

Oh... Ok.. So in other words they are on a shoestring budget and transmitting the absolute minimum, wimpy quality to save money??

I wish there was a book I could buy that explains all this stuff so I could be a little less stupid.

Thank you..

 

[Mr Tony]

not necessarily. I guess they figure folks (cable co's, sat co's etc) have 15 foot dishes that can be tuned precisely to get their station

If they can get a clean enough picture and use less bandwidth it is a win win for them money wise

when I think shoestring budget I think Equity or White Springs

 

[hd fan]

I beleive you have a birdog , check its spectrum analizer and make sure you see that signal over at 11840 , its new location. the birdog will not lock S2 signals but you can peak by maximizing its peak on the spectrum analizer (although your BER approach on DVB-S signals is a better and less subjective one). 0 BER (before Viterby) means a 100% perfect link, you get that!, then forget about Strength, CNR , SA peaks or anything else, you already have the idela digital link , no errors so no need for error correction(although it is applied so that way the equipment calculates BER). PSK are types of digital modulation , the higher the order (QuadraturePSK, 8PSK , 16PSK, 32PSK) the more difficult to lock due to phase noise and FEC is the Forward Eror Correction (1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8 ...), the closest to 1 , the more difficult also to lock the signal due to less error correction info in the stream.

Can you try a different S2 tuner though? Maybe for some odd reasson your PC Card is playing games with you?, it happens often. I remember it was finicky for me with the 6 footer but in my case it should be tracking, alignment or feed setup since a 1.2 meter is more than enough for Ku, specially a commercial Andrews!. I do not think you should adjust anything beyond BER=0 with a 1.2 m on Ku. I have a Viewsat receiver that refuses to lock TVE mux at Hispasat , every other including other Viewsats , work fine on the same setup.

 

[hd fan]

Well , ultimately that is the goal of a Broadcasting Engineer, budget the link so it optimizes the resources at the lowest possible cost, otherwise , anyone could be an engineer (although on this lands they seem to call engineer even the guy who drives a backhoe or a huge construction machine, but that is another issue I have, lol).

Rather than seeing it as someone being cheap , see it as what the new technologies can acomplish with less (spectrum in this case) money.

 

[Bongu]

What card are you using in your PC? There is an app out there called crazyscan that allowed me to use my Prof tuner. It might work for yours. It actually allows me to blindscan S2 signals. I will try to find where I got it from.

Sent from my Timex Sinclair using SatelliteGuys

 

[photoman76]

I used to receive FSTV fine on my 90 cm Fortec dish. But the last few weeks, the signal has become very weak and I can no longer lock it. It barely shows up on the BLSA. If the bandwidth is the same, do they save money by running at lower power?

 

[Dee_Ann]

I beleive you have a birdog , check its spectrum analizer and make sure you see that signal over at 11840 , its new location. the birdog will not lock S2 signals but you can peak by maximizing its peak on the spectrum analizer (although your BER approach on DVB-S signals is a better and less subjective one). 0 BER (before Viterby) means a 100% perfect link, you get that!, then forget about Strength, CNR , SA peaks or anything else, you already have the idela digital link , no errors so no need for error correction(although it is applied so that way the equipment calculates BER). PSK are types of digital modulation , the higher the order (QuadraturePSK, 8PSK , 16PSK, 32PSK) the more difficult to lock due to phase noise and FEC is the Forward Eror Correction (1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8 ...), the closest to 1 , the more difficult also to lock the signal due to less error correction info in the stream.

Can you try a different S2 tuner though? Maybe for some odd reasson your PC Card is playing games with you?, it happens often. I remember it was finicky for me with the 6 footer but in my case it should be tracking, alignment or feed setup since a 1.2 meter is more than enough for Ku, specially a commercial Andrews!. I do not think you should adjust anything beyond BER=0 with a 1.2 m on Ku. I have a Viewsat receiver that refuses to lock TVE mux at Hispasat , every other including other Viewsats , work fine on the same setup.

Thank you for the helpful information.
I will charge up the birddog tonight and see what I can do with it. I have the editor for it so I can create a file specifically for that satellite and those frequencies.

And yes, the Andrew dish I am using is a decommissioned commercial dish that came down off of a store. It most definitely is not a consumer grade home dish. All the mounting hardware and arms are in excellent condition, no damage to them at all. And that I'm finding the channels with a BER of zero should be a pretty good indication that the dish is good stuff. I would assume. I'm still learning about this BER stuff but I do now realize that it needs to be as close to zero as possible.

As for having access to another S2 tuner, I am afraid I do not. All I have is the tuner that is in the pc (see below), my little meter that has a non-S2 tuner, a Coolsat 6000 and the old tuner card I took out of the pc which I also broke when I removed it. Oooopsy! It wasn't S2 anyway. My folks have a new Openbox S9 but there is no way I can get it away from them even for a few hours. They are digging FTA too much to let it go...

What card are you using in your PC? There is an app out there called crazyscan that allowed me to use my Prof tuner. It might work for yours. It actually allows me to blindscan S2 signals. I will try to find where I got it from.

Sent from my Timex Sinclair using SatelliteGuys

This is the card I am using,
Hauppauge Computer Works Ltd : WinTV-NOVA-HD-S2

I use it because it matches the TV ATSC tuner I have installed,
Hauppauge Computer Works : WinTV-HVR-1250

They are seen as one tuner in the pc and I can use one remote control between the two of them. I can change channels up and down between OTA and FTA seamlessly.

Originally my ex had put some sort of older hauppage tuner card in the pc but it was limited so I took it upon myself to upgrade it to the S2 card after seeing so many people talking about S2. I'm so glad I did! Then I wanted to get the OTA tv working so I looked and found a mate to the S2 card and put that in. I didn't have to do anything, I just put it in the slot and it worked. For me, this was important!

I do not know of any other tuner maker that can offer both an S2 and an ATSC tuner card that will work seamlessly as if they were one single tuner using one single remote control.
There probably is but I don't know where to start looking.


Thank you guys!

 

[skysurfer]

to update my earlier post in this thread, it appears the Manhattan is good with a 1.2m dish. It's not flawless reception (a tiling glitch about every 15-20 secs, glitch free audio) but it appears if you have a receiver with a good tuner, you should have a good shot at using a 1.2 meter dish to at least lock onto it. I have a quality of 14 which explains the glitches on the 1.2 meter/manhattan setup. My two other S2 tuners are not able to lock onto the carrier on the 1.2m dish. If you want flawless video reception, it appears the answer is to use a larger dish (and I"m not sure if a 6' is large enough - I know for sure I can do it on a 8' and larger).

 

[Dee_Ann]

to update my earlier post in this thread, it appears the Manhattan is good with a 1.2m dish. It's not flawless reception (a tiling glitch about every 15-20 secs, glitch free audio) but it appears if you have a receiver with a good tuner, you should have a good shot at using a 1.2 meter dish to at least lock onto it. I have a quality of 14 which explains the glitches on the 1.2 meter/manhattan setup. My two other S2 tuners are not able to lock onto the carrier on the 1.2m dish. If you want flawless video reception, it appears the answer is to use a larger dish (and I"m not sure if a 6' is large enough - I know for sure I can do it on a 8' and larger).

It looks like I am going to need to put a C and ku lnb on my 10' dish if I really want this channel... Sigh......

 

[hd fan]

What makes you think that a C/ku LNB combo feed on a 6 or 10 footer will outperform a comercial Andrews 1.2 meter dish hat probably even came with its own ku feed?. Granted my 6 footer/taiwan c/ku Gospell combo is motorised therefore there still could be more tweaking possible to do, but something tells me that I am closer to its maximum performance. Even LPBS is rock solid all day long everyday and I do not even have to nudge the vbox a click in any way , it always stops and gets the signal right away. Q close to 70% during the day and falls at night to below 60 I think on the Az prem+. But something tells me that a fixed 1.2 meter , specially a comercial Andrews will outperform that. Think about it , what kind of c/ku feed are you planning on using? A expensive one or just the typical LNBF unit? , if the later like mine , you get good results but in any case it is a compromise.

I must mention that I have noticed that even with the 6 footer the position where I peak LPBS is not the same position where Montana or the SD mux peaks on this 125W bird. I have no explanation why although in real life scenarios most satellites have more than 1 downlinking antenna so it could be possible that those signals use a different antenna on the sat for downlinking and maybe they have their skew slightly different to account for this. I am more inclined to beleive it is due to terrestrial interference or some other unknown to me factor. Also still no idea why this LPBS always goes down significantly at night while others stay fairly the same under the same weather conditions. That would be a good question for the LPBS engineers.

Maybe you should try leaving the pc tuner card on that LPBS and play with the 1.2m dish until it locks. That seems more practical that just readjusting the 10 footer again for both bands (assuming that was a ku capable mesh dish).

 

[hd fan]

This link , http://www.astra-aps.de/worldskies/satellites/01_amc-fleet/amc-21/amc21_ses_2_26_081.pdf has the most info on this bird yet although it shows both beams (it has 2 2.3m ku antennas on board), its beacons and the frecuency plan for all 24 TP it does not say which TP uses which beam. In other words I have no idea whether LPBS uses the Caribbean beam (more likely since it has 52 dBW EIRP for south Lousiana) or the Conus beam that has 50 EIRP in New Orleans.

I beleive you live in Texas, unlike me , fairly close to the intended target area , where both beams have close EIRP values, so you will see not much difference, but in my case there is only 43 dbW for TP using the Carribean beam and a whooping 50 for the ones on the Conus beam. Both antennas are directionable and it will not surprise me if also TP's can be moved from one beam to the other therefore no need to specify which one uses which as it will be done on demand as needed. I remember Hispasat 1D has the capability to have some TP swtching from Americas beam to Europe and viceversa but not all of them therefore it is specified which one.

My 6 footer could easily be behaving like a 1 meter or less only dish on ku therefore that is why I see LPBS going stronger while other like Montana go down on the same position due to adjacent interference and that could explain why instead of "my crazy theory" of different skew on both downlink antennas or some other factor. Still it does not explain why Q goes lower at night for LPBS.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Well this is off topic but I think I just found the problem with why I can't get LPBS.

I just noticed, while trying all the FEC settings for FSTV that there isn't a setting available in the app to match the setting they are using.

And after scanning ALL of those, I went in and changed each one's FEC and rescanned. I went through all the FEC numbers, AUTO, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 4/5, 5/6, 6/7, 7/8, 8/9, 9/10.

I have always just left those settings alone, left them set to auto because I had no idea what they were/mean/do until the other day when hd fan clued me in and pointed me in the right direction. When I was looking at the LPBS info I see that it says to use 3/5. Well, the my theater app doesn't have 3/5 available in it's options. Oooopsy! No wonder I can not get the channel with my pc and a larger dish but my folks get it just fine with their smaller dish but a brand new Openbox S9. On their Openbox I never had to change any settings, I just blind scanned everything and everything worked.

I do know that while working on their Openbox I have no come across FSTV during a blind scan. They have a much smaller dish and it's not very precise as their motor is loose and the dish wiggles.

As a matter of fact, I just loaded the file from their tuner into the Openbox channel editor and I can see every satellite and every channel that was found by it's blind scan and it definitely did not find anything on 11830 or 11840 or anything close to it. This doesn't surprise me though.

One thing the Openbox editor does not show me, or at least that I can figure out, is what FEC it finds on channels. It just shows the frequency, H or V and channel name.

So anyway, it appears my pc is not capable of tuning in LPBS and as far as FSTV, I guess I'll just have to keep trying. This is going to be really tough though without a meter than can see their S2 signal..