Signal quality readouts

SkySurfer80

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Jun 14, 2019
228
148
Tennessee
So I feel I am truly setup in the arc at the moment as well as I can be with a 76 cm dish. I am pretty much maxed out of my south bird at 87* and hitting the LPB at around 70 quality and the Florida lotto channel at 25 pct or so. Down close to the end of my western arc at 125* I am hitting the PBS HD around the mid 50's. However in the middle around 99* I am not getting as high a quality readout as I have had before when I was adjusting. I had 99* on Infowars hitting in the 50's but now in the teens. However I had lower pct on 87 and 125. I know in retrospect if you have your southern and far west sats peaked as high as they can go you are in the arc. I just find it strange how you can go up or down a bit and pull more quality pct out of the sats in between but then your others will be off. Maybe it is my receiver. I have Geosat 3500 and another funny thing I can hit 7 pct quality and watch hd channels with no glitching! Does anyone else experience this? As a perfectionist it drives me nuts! Here is what I am currently hitting right now.


87*
Lpb hd 70 pct quality
News source 83 pct q
Florida lotto 25 pct
Florida channel 58 pct


89*
Nothing found yet. Cant tune in the religios channels


91 *

News one feeds at 12011 v 13333
70-80 pct depending on time of day?


95*
Cctv as high as 89 pct but hitting feeds better when having the cctv tp at 82 pct??


97
University network at 36 pct

Can tune in some tps up to high 70s but then it knocks down the univeristy channel to 5 pct.


99* infowars 18 pct
Rtn 59 pct


101
Video one test pattern 42 pct


103

Nbc hd plus cozi tv transponder 50-53 pct but weird signal. Can go down to 20s and up to 50s without motor move.


105
Echo feed can tune to high 80s but then it has interference from 103 sat.


113

Reuters 25 pct

Hope channel high 80's



123
Daystar 81 pct


125

Pbs hd mid 50's




I am thinking I am locked in well for a 76 cm but the signals confuse me because i can adjust sats to get a highet signal but it lowers the others and vice versa. I am however hitting my southern sat as high as I can go and hitting my western sat about as high as it can. On 97 it is strange because peaking certain tps will lower others quality pct. It drives me nuts because seeing a 25 pct quality makes me feel like I can hit it better but then again you can watch stable tv at 7 pct on this receiver. Anyone else notice this type of thing? Maybe it it the geosat 3500.
 
Look up "Modified Declination". As my cat would say: Yu needz it. Even with a small dish USALS motor... LOL

Your motor installation booklet will explain how to calculate declination. Once it's set, you never touch that one again. It's always the first one you do, before doing the others.

Here's a couple threads to start you off. I had surgery today, so am on slow recovery mode, sorry if I can't respond more, maybe.

motor declination...setting

Declination adjestment question
 
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I notice most of the tps on blind scan say failed but I figured alot of them are internet or some feed not tv. All in all nearly ever scan of 91,99, and 103 are pulling in new wild feeds every scan even with a small dish
 
Im going to upgrade to a 36 inch or 1 meter dish soon so I at least know the trees are not a problem and if I can get this much signal with a 31 inch I assume a 36 would have me hitting even the hard to get feeds.
 
If i am. Maxed out for my southern and far west sat that is 38 degrees away I should be as dialed in as I can be. Right? I understand the declination. I lowered my elevation on the southern and kept turning the entire mount setup east and west until i hit the spot. My latitude is 85 so i couldnt set up on a bird at true 0 on the motor since nothing is on 85, on 87 i am at a slight tilt.
 
I find it crazy too how you can be hitting a certain tp on a sat at such a high margin but barely hitting the others and then when you fine tune the others that one tp will go way down. It seems if you are locked in on a sat all the tps would be at their highest. Maybe it is my receiver but the tp thing is strange. One example is on 99*. I can tune in infowars up to high 50's while Rtn will be in the 30's, but then can tune in Rtn up to 70 then it knocks infowars down to 5 pct!
 
If you're having one transponder peak at a different spot than another, chances are that the issue is interference from an adjacent satellite. The bigger the dish, the sharper the focus, I think (assuming not a huge difference in focal ratios.) Of course, the sharper the focus, the better your tracking needs to be...

In this age of 8PSK and higher modulation, I wouldn't recommend less than a 90cm dish, although as others have said, some satellites benefit from a 1m or larger dish (primarily for feeds though, as broadcast channels tend to have more power.)

Finally, it's frustrating having a receiver that doesn't provide signal and quality readings in real units. An ideal receiver would display power, signal-to-noise ratio, and bit error rate. The last two are much more important than the first one.
 
There really are a lot of variables to consider. Your elevation or azimuth could be out a tiny bit, as could your LNB focal distance or skew. Don't be afraid to do push and pull tests. This is easier to see minor improvements using a meter instead of a STB for signal level. You could be getting better signal on stronger sats and TPs, but equally out of point on all of them. Still, that's not a very big dish and maybe that's about as good as it gets. Are you using USALS to move your dish? The easiest part of USALS is to tell the dish to go to 87, in your case, and then adjust the motor/dish to peak on that spot, but in some cases the decimal points are forgotten in either the satellite 87.1w or where we live gets rounded off, but 1/10th of a degree is significant, so change your LAT/LONG slightly and see if that helps. Some of us have bought cheap receivers to play with that had sketchy USALS code and it sometimes takes a bit of patience and creativity to get things working right.
 
There really are a lot of variables to consider. Your elevation or azimuth could be out a tiny bit, as could your LNB focal distance or skew. Don't be afraid to do push and pull tests. This is easier to see minor improvements using a meter instead of a STB for signal level. You could be getting better signal on stronger sats and TPs, but equally out of point on all of them. Still, that's not a very big dish and maybe that's about as good as it gets. Are you using USALS to move your dish? The easiest part of USALS is to tell the dish to go to 87, in your case, and then adjust the motor/dish to peak on that spot, but in some cases the decimal points are forgotten in either the satellite 87.1w or where we live gets rounded off, but 1/10th of a degree is significant, so change your LAT/LONG slightly and see if that helps. Some of us have bought cheap receivers to play with that had sketchy USALS code and it sometimes takes a bit of patience and creativity to get things working right.



Yes I have adjusted the lnb in and out. I am about as good as I am gonna get on this size dish. Plus my cable run is a total of about 180 feet, all rg6 quad, and two barrels in total, the blue 3mhz ones I bought them from lowes. I actually was curious of adding an amplifier that came with my house and pre existing cable.

In my bedroom there was an amplifier plugged in the wall with a splitter. It is called extreme amplifier. I googled it but didnt find out much about db gain or anything and also didnt know if it would help being right by the receiver or would need to be somewhere closer to the middle of the cable run, I really never used an amp before. Any of you used one of these? Its called an extreme and has a power adaptor for the wall plug and it goes into a splitter. It mentions nothing about gain or anything. Just saying since I have an 180 foot run coming from dish to receiver, anything I can add for signal would help.
 
Don't bother trying an amp, it won't help, at least I've never seen one help except in extreme cases of wiring being 300' plus long.

There are lnb's that put out a higher signal level (60Db~), but that also usually causes higher noise levels. I'd trying one of those before trying an amp. And/or finding a way to shorten the coax run as much as possible.
 
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A powered switch would do better than an inline amplifier to make up for a long cable run if you are having voltage issues with horizontal TPs. If you are getting less than 17 volts out to the LNB you could be missing horizontal. Otherwise, its the Signal-to-noise ratio that counts and that is not improved by amps/boosters or powered switches - in fact it could (and probably does) add noise.
 
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