How Touchy Are These Things?

[DapOrp]

Ok, I'm just getting started with this whole FTA concept, but I have yet to actually lock onto another Ku-Band satellite.

First off, I've successfully aimed and locked onto echostars, nimiq's, and DirecTV birds for a few years now.

Now I'm trying to aim a 1 meter dish (old primestar dish) at G10R, and it is not happening..

With dishnetwork I know their Dish500 dishes are a huge pain because of the whole skew angle factor, with this primestar dish tho, I am not able to find anything off of the LNB that came with the dish. It is one of those older ones with the two outputs for V and H, and it does appear that water had entered the LNB at some point and did cause some corossion. I've tried to clean that up as best I can, but I really can't tell if it's still functioning or not since I can't find any satellite.

So my question is. If the receiver I'm using (a DVB PCi Card, Twinhan 102G) is able to pull a signal from a circular LNB taped onto the primestar lnb on the dish, is it a pretty good bet that since it's not getting any type of quality measurement from the primestar lnb, that that lnb is dead and un-useable?

I don't know how touchy these types of dishes are in terms of exact alignment either. I know the dishnetwork dishes, when trying to find echostar, can pretty much be turned upside down and still get workable signal. Are normal ku-band signals the same?

Any help or advice would be really appreciated!

 

[PSB]

Make sure the L.O. is set to 10750 for the KU LNBF. (11250 for the DBS/DirecTV LNBF)
KU satellites are MUCH weaker than DBS satellites so 1/8" is enough to make the difference between picture and no picture!

 

[bigOleB]

Any help or advice would be really appreciated!

Get PSB to sell you a new LNB

 

[Pepper]

The skew (rotation of the LNBF) is very important for Ku-band where V and H polarities are involved. On the PrimeStar LNBFs there is a tiny gauge on the front of the "tin can" where it is attached to the feedhorn. You can twist the "tin can" to match the skew you need.

You might try putting a DBS LNBF on there temporarily and find 119. Then it's just a few degrees to the west and just slightly downward in the tilt, and you should be at 123. One of those cheap-o satellite finders from ebay might help also.

By the way, I have had much better luck with the satellites in the 90's locations, they are higher in the sky from my location. I didn't get G10R at all until Katrina took out the top of the tree that was in the way (thankfully it went AWAY from the house, otherwise I would have had a big mess to worry about).