Signal quality comparison requested

[colbec]

Thanks to your support I have managed to get my first C-Band dish working after a fashion. Attached is a picture, please keep in mind that this is a temporary install that would not survive a wind over 2 km/h. The whole point of the install was to see if I could get some used parts to work together and whether the install could be reasonably accomplished by one person. The parts do work together to some extent and it can be done... with a bit of juggling! The lnb cover is deliberately left off at this point, the dish will be dismantled in a day or so. It is a fixed dish install, since I don't at this point have a 4dtv to run the positioner. Also the polarity motor is shot, so it is stuck on V for the time being.

V is all I need to get a good due south satellite AMC-6, and I can get the network and NASA channels no problem. I set the chapparal lnb to OCS on the Coolsat which seems to work.

However signal quality is not as good as I had hoped for a 10 footer. It is about 120 feet of cable run. I am getting 69-70% on this TP which is good enough for a decent picture. Occasionally NASA will blip temporarily up into the 80s which sort of suggests I could maybe look for more signal. The dish is a bit dinged but not in bad shape compared to other pics I have seen.

And yes, the Expressvu dish can see over top of the CBand! Thanks for all your help you guys!

 

[truckracer]

Your signal levels are dead on good. Get yourself one of the BSC-621 c/ku lnbf's and you can pick up a good used analog receiver to position your dish from one of the vendors on this site or flea-bay.

Get that dish moving and you will really love it.

Do a search on "slaving" and you will see how to slave your FTA receiver to the analog. There are a lot of analog feeds up there.

Orbit magazine lists them in alphabetical order. They have a website but I can't remember how the URL is worded exactly.

Dish looks good. I have a 7.5' SAMI mesh and love it. I even get great reception on the G-1 (Galaxy 15) HBO/Max channels. A lot of people with smaller than 10 footers have problems with those channels because of their low FEC ratio.

 

[chefwan]

what do you have the dish mount on. is that a piece of wood? i cant see the picture good ?

 

[colbec]

Yes it is a wooden post. As stated, it is a temporary setup just to see if the parts work, and will be quickly dismantled. The wind rose a little this afternoon and I immediately started losing signal and macro blocking. I see now that the world of C-Band is quite different from Ku. It's been an interesting learning experience.

 

[turbosat]

Might do better on digital if you set your lnb to standard, LO=5150 for c-band.

 

[chefwan]

oh ok thats cool i was just wondering

 

[colbec]

Turbosat: yes, the lnb settings had me a bit concerned. There is nothing marked on the Chapparal to indicate what settings are needed, but I did guess that the LO of 5150 was right and set that and stuck to it.

The LNB type was a different matter. The Coolsat gives me Single, Universal, OCS, OCS-DP, 2 x Legacy Twin and 2 X Legacy Quad choices. I started out on single, and then spent half an hour trying to find a signal on a known TP. Up, down, sideways, here, there everywhere nothing. I was going to leave a note here but thought I should try some self-help first and selected OCS at random. Less than a minute later I had a signal, and was able to peak on it. I've no idea what OCS does, but the difference was quite dramatic.

It was quite interesting moving the dish to find the signal. The main reason for sloppiness in my setup was due to the fact that the actuator was not connected. I used ropes etc to ensure the dish was roughly correct. It's sure a lot easier tweaking a 24" offset!

I think I will probably go the V-Box II route to position the dish. I just don't fancy getting myself into the battery situation on 4DTV used receivers. Maybe a freebie will come along one day ...