Line Amplifier test

[FTAsquirrel]

Some time back I picked up one of them Line Amplifiers from Sadoun (great company to deal with).

It was cheap and I wanted to test it, at the time it did not seem to work at all. My cable run is about 100' so really no need for one. So it went on the FTA gear shelf.

Well I got to thinking about it and I did some testing/experimenting yesterday. I installed the amp only about 4 inches from my Invacom QHP-31 LNBF output yesterday just to see what would happen. Last time I messed with it think it was after the motor. My 90cm dish is peaked at its best and I am tracking the arc good. So really no need to have the amp but its a hobby so I have to keep testing.

I was very surprised to see that I got an over all 10% or better increase in signal and the same in the quality on all the satellites with the pansat 9200. It even seems to help out on some of the very weak feeds. My cable is new and when I use the Fortec Mercury for peaking the dish I only have about a 5 foot cable and the signal diferance between at the dish and in the house is not 1% if any.

Just want to see if anyone has had good results like this, I know that the normal reports back from the in line amps have not been good.

 

[Tron]

If you need an amp, the way you have it installed is the best way... Place the amp as close to the signal source (LNBF) as possible. This gives the amp the cleanest signal to work with, and you're not amplifying as much noise. Remember, though, that signal strength means nothing, and quality is the important factor. I think that amps will probably help on runs where cable length is near the limit, but should be avoided in any other circumstance.

 

[skysurfer]

I concur amps should be avoided whenever possible. I have found I can't lock DVB-S2 signals when I have an amp inline and when I remove it, I can lock DVB-S2 signals.

Alogn the lines of DVB-S2 signals, I also find splitters also hurt when it comes to locking DVB-S2 - on most of the c-band ones, I need to hook my dish LNB directly to my PCI card rather than the usual configuration of splitting the LNB with one port to my spectrum analyzer and one port to a receiver with the LNB OUT of that receiver going to my PCI card. It works great for locking DC2/DVB/DSS signals, doesn't work at all for most DVB-S2 signals.