Problems with Hotbird 13E, with a SeaTel control unit

[AmateurSat]

Hi everybody, I have a very difficult situation. We have a seatel dish installed on a yacht which is controlled with a SEATEL DAC 2200 unit. That should be not a problem, as it's just like a plain dish, it just turns automatically etc..

The problem is, that some channels are boxed up, but in some part of the day they are working fine again. I think there might be something wrong with the set up. Maybe you could help? I think that POL might also be off, but where could I get information about the correct POL?

The receivers are: Samsung Digital Satellite receiver DSB-B350W

The settings on the dish control unit are:

SAT: 13E
THRS: 1595
FREQ: 1284
NID: 0000
AZ: 176.5
EL: 038.9
REL: 358.6
AGC: 1820

Baud: 27500
Tone: ON
Volt: Vert
Fec: 3/4

Also I wanted to ask you how do I get the Frequency? As the frequency I found on LyngSat for the channels which are mixed up is: 12597 Vertical
Names of the channels are: RTR Planeta and Perviy kanal Europa 12597 V, they work when they want...all the other channels work just fine.

 

[gillham]

To get the frequency on the wire you subtract the LNB local oscillator frequency (LO) from the transponder frequency (TP).

A Universal LNBF will normally have a low LO of 9750 and a high LO of 10600, selected via 22Khz tone. Subtracting your 12597 transponder from the high LO gets 1997 mhz as the intermediate frequency (IF) on the wire.

Your frequency of 1284 is really 11884 (11884-10600=1284) with tone ON and 11034 (11034-9750=1284) with tone OFF. 11034 looks like it is RTR Planeta. 11884 is very close to 11881 which is a Sky Italia transponder. With tone ON you're about 3 Mhz off frequency I think. That could be causing your lock issues.

The polarity of both 11034 and 12597 is vertical, indicated by the "V" (versus "H") on LyngSat.

The values punched into the dish control unit should be for a strong transponder on the satellite and hopefully one that is fairly unique to 13°E. This allows the unit to find the satellite and confirm a lock. Does the control unit have its own feed from the LNB or is it sharing the signal to the receivers?

If you will be watching Perviy kanal Europa more often than RTR Planeta then I think you should use that transponder's information.

Since you have 1284 and tone ON, I think the settings are incorrect. It should be 1284 tone OFF for 11034. Or, you should use a freq of 1997 with tone ON for the 12597 transponder.

Note that I'm guessing here, I'm not really familiar with your hardware and you would need to confirm the high and low LO of your particular LNB. I think it is going to be 9750/10600 Mhz since that is normal for Universal LNBes in Europe, but it would be good to confirm it.

Feel free to post a photo of the yacht and dish, I know I would love to see it.

 

[AmateurSat]

Thank you very much, your post helped out a lot!
Unfortunately the channel is still not working properly! The LNB should be a universal european one, and as you said the High and LO should be 9750/10600, thank you for that.
I checked the settings on the SeaTel unit again, and I got another version now..maybe the POL is also off?
The settings are as follows:
SAT: 13E THRS: 1595
Freq: 1284 NID: 0000

Please NOTE, that when I changed the freq to 1997 (as per the transponder for Perviy kanal Europa 12597 V) I was not able to get ANYTHING, not even the Perviy kanal Europa, the receiver is telling "Searching for signal"
That is why I thought, that maybe the POL is also off..

AZ: 174.8 EL: 038.8
REL: 358.8 AGC: 1830
POL: 0090 <- should it be like this?

The POL offset is 13 in the SETUP menu!

LAT: 44N LON: 009E
HDG: 174.3

I will make photos for you ))

 

[meinename]

Thank you very much, your post helped out a lot!
Unfortunately the channel is still not working properly! The LNB should be a universal european one, and as you said the High and LO should be 9750/10600, thank you for that.
I checked the settings on the SeaTel unit again, and I got another version now..maybe the POL is also off?
The settings are as follows:
SAT: 13E THRS: 1595
Freq: 1284 NID: 0000

Please NOTE, that when I changed the freq to 1997 (as per the transponder for Perviy kanal Europa 12597 V) I was not able to get ANYTHING, not even the Perviy kanal Europa, the receiver is telling "Searching for signal"
That is why I thought, that maybe the POL is also off..

AZ: 174.8 EL: 038.8
REL: 358.8 AGC: 1830
POL: 0090 <- should it be like this?

The POL offset is 13 in the SETUP menu!

LAT: 44N LON: 009E
HDG: 174.3

I will make photos for you ))

I got Google (search: seatel satellite DAC 2200) to come up with this manual for the DAC-2200 controller:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...0tnCDw&usg=AFQjCNEv1xDWztDZ0SiOi_mNfv-JuM-gcg

It is a PDF file, so be prepared.

Don't mess with the POL SCALE setting. Leave POL SCALE at 0090.
It tells the controller how many degrees between Horizontal and Vertical Polarity

You should make sure that the POLANG is 0072 for auto-polarization adjustment. I think POLANG is skew which is an important part of polarization.

Have you made sure that the GPS and Ships Gryo are attached and are sending updates as the ship rolls in the waves?

 

[AmateurSat]

I got Google (search: seatel satellite DAC 2200) to come up with this manual for the DAC-2200 controller:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...0tnCDw&usg=AFQjCNEv1xDWztDZ0SiOi_mNfv-JuM-gcg

It is a PDF file, so be prepared.

Don't mess with the POL SCALE setting. Leave POL SCALE at 0090.
It tells the controller how many degrees between Horizontal and Vertical Polarity

You should make sure that the POLANG is 0072 for auto-polarization adjustment. I think POLANG is skew which is an important part of polarization.

Have you made sure that the GPS and Ships Gryo are attached and are sending updates as the ship rolls in the waves?

Thanks, The GPS is communicating with the SeaTel and everything should be fine. I gave a phone call to SeaTel, and they told that the POL should be automatically adjusted from the ships GPS. So no need to change that.

The POLANG is 0013 in the setup menu! Should I change it to 0072 then? Why do you think it should be 0072?

 

[meinename]

Thanks, The GPS is communicating with the SeaTel and everything should be fine. I gave a phone call to SeaTel, and they told that the POL should be automatically adjusted from the ships GPS. So no need to change that.

The POLANG is 0013 in the setup menu! Should I change it to 0072 then? Why do you think it should be 0072?

Good to hear that the GPS is fine. However, I'm more concerned about the Gyro being hooked up right. The pitch and roll of the boat would throw the skew right off. And skew is very important, As I think that is very relevant to your problem right now.

In the manual (5.15, page 5-8) that I linked to above it said that when POLANG is set to 0072, the unit takes care of that value automatically.

Another thing in the manual was that a skew of 0° was not POLANG: 0000 but POLANG: 0030
A different example would be assuming your still at N44, E9 and you want Hotbird@13°E your skew is about -4°, which is POLANG: 0026

So right off there is a problem if your aiming for Hotbird@13°E and your POLANG is set to 0013, it's off by 13° and you shouldn't be getting anything.

Try setting POLANG to 0026 and you should get signal for Hotbird
But we want a automatic setup whenever possible, set POLANG to 0072 after you've checked POLANG 0026 works.

 

[AmateurSat]

Good to hear that the GPS is fine. However, I'm more concerned about the Gyro being hooked up right. The pitch and roll of the boat would throw the skew right off. And skew is very important, As I think that is very relevant to your problem right now.

In the manual (5.15, page 5-8) that I linked to above it said that when POLANG is set to 0072, the unit takes care of that value automatically.

Another thing in the manual was that a skew of 0° was not POLANG: 0000 but POLANG: 0030
A different example would be assuming your still at N44, E9 and you want Hotbird@13°E your skew is about -4°, which is POLANG: 0026

So right off there is a problem if your aiming for Hotbird@13°E and your POLANG is set to 0013, it's off by 13° and you shouldn't be getting anything.

Try setting POLANG to 0026 and you should get signal for Hotbird
But we want a automatic setup whenever possible, set POLANG to 0072 after you've checked POLANG 0026 works.

Thank you! I am still on N44 and E9, moored to the dock. And not going anywhere from here for a while. The Gyro should be connected properly!! I had a look at the manual also, thanks!

I checked the settings once again, and the 0013 I was talking about was unfortunately the "Pol offset" which has now gone automatically back to 0005

Here are all the settings:

El trim: -0010
Az trim: 0005
Auto thres: 0000
El step size: 0000
Az step size: 0000
Step integral: 0000
Search INC: 0010
Search limit: 0200
Search delay: 0010
Sweep INC: 0000
System type: 0002
Polang type: 0072
Pol offset: 0005
Pol scale: 0090
Az limit1: 0000
Az limit2: 0000

EDIT:

and the problem still exists...I cannot make it to work on the 12597 V transponder, when I enter the
1997 with tone ON for the 12597 V
The receivers do not show anything at all!

EDIT2:

there was also an error today morning when I checked. Which was: 0137 0128
I checked the manual, and found that 0128 should mean "Satellite out of range" I didn't find anything on 0137 though..

 

[meinename]

EDIT2:

there was also an error today morning when I checked. Which was: 0137 0128
I checked the manual, and found that 0128 should mean "Satellite out of range" I didn't find anything on 0137 though..

0137 is the number of communication errors between the Dish RADOME and the Control Unit. Shouldn't be more than 10 per minute.
The answer was just above the 0128 error codes.

To confirm: it was working (receiving channels, but not very well) before we started messing with it? And your not receiving anything right now?

 

[AmateurSat]

0137 is the number of communication errors between the Dish RADOME and the Control Unit. Shouldn't be more than 10 per minute.
The answer was just above the 0128 error codes.

To confirm: it was working (receiving channels, but not very well) before we started messing with it? And your not receiving anything right now?

Everything is working now also, with the 1284 frequency. Just the "Perviy kanal Europa 12597 V" does not want to work sometimes very well, the picture is slow, or it stopps on some point and then works again.

That's why I cannot understand why NOTHING is working at all, when I enter the "12597 V = 1997" frequency.

 

[meinename]

Everything is working now also, with the 1284 frequency. Just the "Perviy kanal Europa 12597 V" does not want to work sometimes very well, the picture is slow, or it stopps on some point and then works again.

That's why I cannot understand why NOTHING is working at all, when I enter the "12597 V = 1997" frequency.

I honestly think I'm about confused as you are on that frequency thing.
"Hey if it ain't, broke don't fix it" as they say.

To be honest I would venture the guess that PkE is a weaker signal and your dish is having trouble tracking fast enough to correct at times.
I'm honestly at a loss

 

[AmateurSat]

I honestly think I'm about confused as you are on that frequency thing.
"Hey if it ain't, broke don't fix it" as they say.

To be honest I would venture the guess that PkE is a weaker signal and your dish is having trouble tracking fast enough to correct at times.
I'm honestly at a loss

Everything seems to be working now...maybe it was something to do with the satellite

We tried everything and all should be fine, I also found that you can change the transponder from the receiver also, so might have a try there!!

Thank you for your help guys, this board helped me out, well done!!

 

[Pat&Matt]

Hi everybody, also need help. We have a seatel dish installed on ship which is controlled with a SEATEL DAC 2200 unit.
I am trying to catch Bein channels on Arabsat 26E. Problem is I am catching more than 100 free channels except these ones.
My settings are below:

The settings on the dish control unit are:

SAT: 26E
THRS: 1850
FREQ: 1430
NID: 0000
AGC: 2100

Baud: 27500
Tone: Off
Volt: Vert
Fec: Auto

Polang type: 0072
Pol offset: 0155

So these Bein channels are on 11180V. I have dual LNB 9750/10600, so to get freq 11180 - 9750 (tone off) is 1430.
Also cabels on multwitch are connected on Vlow. I am catching NID 02BE what means I am on correct sattelite and AGC is high.
I don't understand what am doing wrong. SKEW parametar I don't have on this version Of SEATEL DAC 2200 uNIT or it is called other name ?
When I am changing frequency I always have same channels. What is with this pol offset parameter, in manual is written that must be 0030 , I have
tried but without success. Please can somebody try to help, because I don't know what parameter to change anymore.

 

[Titanium]

Answered in the other thread. http://www.satelliteguys.us/xen/index.php?posts/3909898/