digitalb on Eutel W2 (16.E)

ciarann

Lads,
I bought a 110cm Dish on Ebay for €109 plus P+P and have Put an nice pole in the middle of my Garden and used a spirit level to get her bang bang only today to Receive stuff on the westside.Plus from hotbird outwards on the East.
But to my horror I span to Digitalb and its still not coming in clear now I intend to bring the dish down tommorw to hopefully receive this vital package.Picture included can anybody please advice location Balbriggan

watty

A 110cm is 4times harder to align then a Sky minidish. A very small error will lose most of the signal.

At least in Dublin the signal should be good on 110cm

ciarann

Watty your the man
But I need more info 110cm torture. I thaught if you got a nice big dish it would be easier to aline,maybe not>> maybe I have a busy saturday ahead of me but I want digitalb big time,

watty

No, bigger dish = narrower beam. Must be aligned MUCH more carefully, vertical (elevation) and horizontal (azimuth).

I hope your pole is about 3" or more, thick walled and lots of concrete in ground , Wind load about 4 tonnes.


4m Dish for example is 16 times harder to align and often needs two motors with continiuos tiny movement (about 1mm at dish edge max) to keep aligned.

Your 1.1m dish is such that an in-experienced person might not be able to find any satellites. On the other end of scale a 40cm camping dish is nearly twice as easy to align as a Sky mini dish, but may give less than 1/2 the signal of a Sky minidish.

EIN

watty wrote:

No, bigger dish = narrower beam. Must be aligned MUCH more carefully, vertical (elevation) and horizontal (azimuth).

I hope your pole is about 3" or more, thick walled and lots of concrete in ground , Wind load about 4 tonnes.


4m Dish for example is 16 times harder to align and often needs two motors with continiuos tiny movement (about 1mm at dish edge max) to keep aligned.

Your 1.1m dish is such that an in-experienced person might not be able to find any satellites. On the other end of scale a 40cm camping dish is nearly twice as easy to align as a Sky mini dish, but may give less than 1/2 the signal of a Sky minidish.

i find it a lot easier to align my new 90cm dish than my 39 cm one!!
its far easier!
im finding loads of satellites with it..

wil

Ciarann.
Have you checked the skew angle on your lnb. From the photo it appears almost vertical. On stronger signals you may not notice much but with weaker ones I have found it can make a difference between picture and none.
Should be around 20 clockwise.

Have to agree with Watty with a qualification re EINs experiences
Yes it is considerably easier to align a small dish than a large dish on a strong signal.
With a small dish on a weak signal you are unlikely to pull in sufficient signal to allign anything to, or get much more than a broken or intermittent picture if at all. Your meter may not even register anything.
A practical example of the how a small cannot even be aligned exactly, ie looks at a bigger area of sky is with Turksat and Hellassat, 2 close satellites. I can pick up both separately in different positions on a 90cm. With a 39cm alligned on Hellasat I get many of the channels but I also get the stronger signals from Turksat appearing to come from the same position, yet they are a few degrees to the east.

The other aspect of this is the mounting.
A large dish will usually have a sturdy secure mounting with more smooth movement in one single axis only at a time, compared to a more flimsy mount on a small dish with random jerky, less controllable movement in several axes at once. On the large dish it is easier to manually scan the sky in a controlled methodical manner making it "easier" ie possible to pick up weaker signals.
Out of curiosity Ein what satellites have you been able to pick up on your 90cm dish so far?

EIN

wil wrote:

Ciarann.
Have you checked the skew angle on your lnb. From the photo it appears almost vertical. On stronger signals you may not notice much but with weaker ones I have found it can make a difference between picture and none.
Should be around 20 clockwise.

Have to agree with Watty with a qualification re EINs experiences
Yes it is considerably easier to align a small dish than a large dish on a strong signal.
With a small dish on a weak signal you are unlikely to pull in sufficient signal to allign anything to, or get much more than a broken or intermittent picture if at all. Your meter may not even register anything.
A practical example of the how a small cannot even be aligned exactly, ie looks at a bigger area of sky is with Turksat and Hellassat, 2 close satellites. I can pick up both separately in different positions on a 90cm. With a 39cm alligned on Hellasat I get many of the channels but I also get the stronger signals from Turksat appearing to come from the same position, yet they are a few degrees to the east.

The other aspect of this is the mounting.
A large dish will usually have a sturdy secure mounting with more smooth movement in one single axis only at a time, compared to a more flimsy mount on a small dish with random jerky, less controllable movement in several axes at once. On the large dish it is easier to manually scan the sky in a controlled methodical manner making it "easier" ie possible to pick up weaker signals.
Out of curiosity Ein what satellites have you been able to pick up on your 90cm dish so far?

ok astra 28 , astra 19, hotbird 13 (perfect signal) thats mainly it.. as i panned the dish around found good few more but didnt spend time locking in the signal......
its on a pole mount in the garden ...at the minute im not sure what satellites i want to point to...i was a bit disappointed with hotbird 13e .... only found a handful of english channels..... any suggestions?


can you tell me what is a blind scan receiver? is it one that just scans all freqs rather than picking one from a list on the menu and using preprogrammed freqs?

wil

Blind scan is meant to search for all frequencies, symbol rates etc to find all available channels whether they are listed or not.
In practice I suspect very few receivers do actually do a real blind scan, but use a pseudo blind scan within parameters defined in the firmware.
This may miss some channels.
Other scans may use the transponder info in the receiver to scan thru these same transponders or others may use info transmitted on certain transponders but this may only list some of the possible channels. The different methods are used because a true blind scan could take a long time (hours).

As for English channels up there, well you are best served by Sky on Astra2.
Otherwise, being on the edge of Europe but too far from the US to see their sats, we are stuck with satellites serving Europe, Middle East and North Africa where for the most part, English is not the language of choice.
Most of the fta English speaking channels are either news, shopping or religous, some a combination of all 3.:eek:
You will find some other FTA channels occasionally broadcasting series or films with original English audio with other subtitles. There may be others in the pay channels but if you are looking outside of Sky, then it might just be cheaper to rent it at your local videoshop than pay a fortune for the sake of some US films etc.
If you look down the threads you will find some reports of fta channels carrying mainstream US content.
You could also take the opportunity to learn a another European language incl German, Spanish, Italian, Polish or Mandarin

yellabelly

I setup Digitalb today on a Dreambox with 1m dish. The signal strength is showing 72% but the picture is breaking up. I tried fine tuning East/West but no improvement could be made. Unless the dish is out of plane these channels are going to be unwatchable.

wil

Have you tried fine tuning the lnb skew. It can make quite a difference on weaker channels. You can be way off for stronger channels and no problem with picture, but a degree or 2 may be enough to get a stable picture on weaker ones.

snaps

Ciarran,
Forgive me if im being stupid, you havent said if your dish is motorised or fixed? If its motorised what satellite did you set up on? 5west or 8west would be best for you as your due south satellite. also just turning the dish on a pole (Left to right) on a fixed dish will be no good either as the elevation is different on different satellites. some satellites will come in just moving the dish left or right (Strong ones like astra, hotbird) but elevation needs to be adjusted. this will matter on weaker transponders on certain satellites. I have a 1.1 dish with a titanium .2lnb and have no problems whats so ever with digitalalb. I even have great reception from 26east as well when my friend down the road struggles with standard transponders on 26east that boom in for me. A good LNB will always help with tricky satellite positions. Cable also is a great factor. Are you sure by chance there is nothing in the way of the 16east satellite on the house, like a chimney? I set up a motorised dish in someones back garden and he couldnt pick up 19.2east (Most other sats were fine) and it was the chimney on his house. Raising the dish 10 centimeters solved the problem?

Aquos76

I am getting 16e on a 80cm fixed dish here in Waterford. I am getting 78% signal on the 5 premium sports channels. So far no sign of any picture break up.

byte

I'm getting 16E with a TD78, though I don't have the viewing card to try Digitalb Premium yet. I do get occasional breakup on a few other channels on that bird though, like Footschool TV (odd channel that). I'm in Donegal though, I think I'm gonna need to splash out on a bigger dish!

IrishBazza

1.1 metre dish is the minimum to go anything north of Dublin. I have 80% strength and quality.

fish fingers

Got local installer to align my 80cm dish to eutalsat today. Highest im getting is 72% . Picture was breaking up when it really pi$$ed down. I have the premium card. Looks like i need bigger dish. Ill leave it a week or so and see how it pans out

Pal

Aquos76 wrote:

I am getting 16e on a 80cm fixed dish here in Waterford. I am getting 78% signal on the 5 premium sports channels. So far no sign of any picture break up.

I have a dual LNB setup 13e and 19e.

possible to squeeze in 16e in the middle ?

byte

What size dish? It may be possible if the LNB's have narrow feedhorns, though with 16E being offset a bit, it prob won't help.

I got my Premium card today, and getting 71% with Triax TD78 (on receiver, though this wouldn't be a true reading). Channels working OK atm, though I had to remove the multi-LNB arm and just use the one Inverto 0.2dB LNB to get breakup to stop.