LNB - Dish combinations.

Hi Guys,

Following the move of FTA channels to Astra 2E there are various reports of problems in the French Alps.

I am about to install a dish for me and one for a friend and was planning to use Sky Zone 2 dishes * both with Zinwell quads but this now seems unlikely to get reliable, if any, reception.

The concensus seems to be that the Inverto Black Ultra 0.2 Dual LNB seems to be pretty good in comparison to the Zinwell. Am I right in believing that the Inverto requires a normal circular (or vertically elliptical) offset dish ?

BTW increasing the dish size above 80cm is probably a no-no for installations on apartment balconies due to local owner committee restrictions.

The 2E footprint must drop off very rapidly because SES show that a 60cm is OK just north of Switzerland and the High Savoy is only about 120m (200km) further south.

[ * Zone 1 dishes were OK a few years back]

Welcome to the astra 2E/F FTA fringe reception club.

Inverto Black Ultra is a great LNB i use this LNB on 3 of my 4 motorised offset dishes and i have quite the opposite for me being well inside the fringe reception
signal seems to have improved for me recently on the weakest Transponder Zone Horror on 11221 H normally it was always the weakest now im getting
Q100% S89% before it was always Q100% S78%
but really to be perfectly honest any LNB will give much better signals than the bog standard cheapo scrap Sky LNB's
if i put a Sky LNB on any of my dishes im sure i'd struggle to get even 60% Signal thats just how bad Sky LNB's really are
it may say 0.3db but thats rubbish it preforms like a 0.6db ..lol's !!

a Triax 78cm isnt a massive dish by any means either but those 13cm or so really do make a difference ,
few years ago i normally would have used zone2 dishes for peeps looking about Freesat but now i wouldnt even waste my time it takes a lot less time to build a Triax 78cm dish and it still fits well on any Sky Bracket if not very badly exposed to wind

im sure i read somewhere that any dish under 1 meter is permitted and is a basic human right to have a dish upto that size i think we already had this arguement on this board a while back regarding needing planning permissions and the like ?

anyhow hopefully you get some success if not swing your dish over to 27.5w where signal is much stronger and you'll at least see BBC/Itv/Ch4 and few others British channels HD :sifone:
Have a nice weekend : )
-
Barney

Thanks Barney.

Possibly the reason a Sky LNB gives poor results on a standard dish is that they are "tuned" to the Sky dish shape with scalar rings to illuminate the wider dish shape.

I think I'll take out just one 80cm offset with an Inverto and see what I get. Reading recent reports it does seem as though the signal has improved a bit since it started up, probably they've been tweaking the beam a bit or the sat is fully on position since 1N was moved out of the way.

27W isn't an option unless I remove a bl**dy great mountain :D

As Detlef explained above using a standard Sky Quad on a standard dish is pointless due to the fact that the feedhorn inside is matched the the elliptical shape of the Zone1 and Zone 2 Sky dish so by putting this on a standard offset dish you are only illuminating around 70% of the dish face.

And another good point raised by Barney is to seek out your EU rights for Home Grown TV as i know in the UK that you are allowed by EU law to put a dish size up above regulations to be able to view your own local TV, I would imagine that anything above 1m here would have to have planning permission or be Ground/Hidden mounted. this is certainly something to look into in your part of the world

This site has given me a bit of encouragement. It superimposes individual signal reports onto a map of Europe. There aren't any reports specific to France's Haute Savoie but clear weather reception looks possible on an 80cm.

_https://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=2141787043984679754 26.0004e9fbccd51c39d0317&ie=UTF8& t=h&ll=48.224673,3.339844&spn=28. 163878,56.25&z=4&source=embed

@digicon - whilst EU law should apply to France, I could be dead and buried before any legal challenge was successful.

The problem is that, in the case of apartment blocks, I would be allowed to have a 1m dish on the roof but it would need to be professionally installed and available to all owners. That would mean funding a complete distribution system for upwards of 50 flats. As I'm the only one really interested in UK TV, I would end up funding the lot. The French are only interested in 19E which can be received by a 50cm on a balcony. It does give BBC World news and Sky News Int, plus a few others but no entertainment stuff.

I have no problems with an old 60cm dish in Savoie which is to the south of Haute-Savoie. And reception was 100% stable last week in heavy snow.

I don't think you need a 80cm dish in Haute-Savoie, but if you have an 80cm dish available there would be no harm to use it.

@Burnham - we need to keep in touch. There are reports on the link I gave above that people are losing the BBC channels just over the border in Italy now they have moved to 2E.

I think I have decided to take a Triax 80cm and a Zone 2 dish and see what I get. Probably won't happen until Easter though.

@Burnham

My lack of knowledge about French departments.

Apparently Espace Killy is in Savoie and not Haute Savoie as I posted above, so your feedback is totally relevant.

It appears they are still tweaking Astra 2E since it was brought into full service (my guess is they have lowered the beam slightly as a large chunk of the signal wouldn't have touched planet earth anyway but just shot out into space over the north pole).

If you could check all channels especially the Freesat ones (BBC, ITV, Ch4, Five, etc) over the next week and report back that would be most appreciated.

Just out of interest, what dish, LNB and receiver are you using.

My place only 15 miles north west of Espace Killy - I am confident your 80cm dish will be more than adequate there. When I was there a week ago I was using a wide range of channels and had no problem on any channel. As mentioned, it snowed a lot when I was there, and I never lost the signal.

The dish is an ancient first generation 60cm Ѕky mesh dish. Actual size is approx 70cmx60cm. LNB is a new Black Ultra twin. Two receivers - an old Sky+ & a VU+.

I've tried a bog standard Zone 2 dish with the supplied LNB and most come in except in very heavy snow. ITV London goes first but ITV Scotland seems a lot stronger.

Just to complete the story I welded up a more rigid dish mount and then went round the alignment loop three times (lateral, elevation and skew) and got a far better signal so will probably stay with the zone 2 and its supplied quad LNB.

I've now added a second LNB for 19.2E and am very happy with the results. It didn't snow in late June but we had some good thunderstorms and still no loss of picture.

So the setup is now :
Pace 3100 (modded) with 2 connections to the 28.2E LNB
DM600 via a manual switch fed from both LNBs

Somewhere I have a 2 way DiSEqC switch but finding it is . . . . . . .

I agree that If you could check all channels especially the Freesat ones (BBC, ITV, Ch4, Five, etc) over the next week and report back that would be most appreciated.




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