Install advice needed

Icehouse

I'll be installing my friend's dish this weekend - Can anyone tell me what channel I should view after system setup/signal strength OK etc. to ensure that I've installed the dish correctly - i.e. a hard to reach channel (on Astra 2D FTA?) to make sure the installation is perfect. We're still waiting on her card to arrive.

I've used the satellite for caravans method of installing before and had all set up in about 20 minutes.

watty

There are no "hard to get" offical Sky channels in Ireland. The Central Europe beam channels on Eurobird ARE weak though.

Use Installer menu (needed to set RF output channel as default of 68 causes problems)

Services 4 0 1 Select

Go "Manual Tuning" and check a few H and V transponders on 2A and 2D. Don't actualy add channels, just use it to see signal.

Compare a H and V that are neighbouring frequencies on 2D or 2A. Adjust the "twist" (skew) for best H & V, only after best signal got from Up/down and left/right.

Note on Manual tuning only some transponders seem to operate the "quality" bargraph.

If you add Stanice0 this way and it actually works then your are well aligned for Eurobird 28.5E. Which on a minidish will mean good on Astra 28.2E also. Only a 5M or so dish is going to see those two "slots" as different positions.

The "ordinary" Signal Test only looks at one default transponder and thus doesn't highlight any problems! But if main signal test Quality is more than 3/4 on most boxes it is likely all channels are OK.

In fact in Ireland 2D channels should give a BETTER signal than some 2A/2B channels.

I have a suspicion that on some digiboxes the signal level bar is "relative", i.e. if at more than 100% it will "wrap" around to about 30% as on 90cm dish I have seen that if not quite "peaked" on a sat meter at dish, the signal is at 100% and quality nearly 90% and "peaking" signal on meter the Digibox signal level "jumped" to 30% and quality rose higher. Could be something else.


Anyway, if signal is more than 30% the Quality Bar is the important one on the Default Transponder signal test.

"Quality" is averaged BER (Bit Error Rate), if signal is poorer the BER is worse, to point where you get pixellation as errors can't be corrected from FEC information. Above a certian "goodness" of "Quality" the BER is low enough that almost all errors are fixed by the FEC info.

The 2D uses less FEC (5/6) compared with 2A/2B FEC(2/3), this means the 22,000 caries more actual "real" data than the 27,500 SR of 2A/2B. The assumption is that you get a better signal in the "main footprint" so less FEC is needed for 2D.

This, I suppose is why a misaligned dish is more noticable on 2D than on 2A/2B

Icehouse

Thanks Watty for the reply/advice. I live in France btw!

watty

North & West French coast should be same as UK. UK Ch Is. are closer to France?

Alsace (sp?) on Eastern border or Cannes (sp?) in South might need a bigger dish ( 90cm ?) for reliability, but should still be ok with 90cm on 2D.