Need a new lnb

[oscar]

Ian -- check this . Mate bought one for his prime focus dish and happy now receiving weaker channels not available before .
h++ps://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/373999778849?hash=item57141fbc21: g:9~EAAOSwifdhJ4d8
C120

[ian]

Nice one Oscar.

Thats the first time I've ever seen reasonably priced C120's

However I've just bought the Goldenmedia talked about in this thread. I'm just impatiently waiting for it to arrive lol. I've bookmarked that seller though.

Ian.

[oscar]

I was going to buy one for my 1.3 prime focus dish, as I also use C120 flange, but other things are higher on the priority list right now .

[ian]

Well its arrived and it turns out it fits perfectly with the covers removed. Thanks Cosworth. Ive even manged to put half of the cover back after cutting the feedhorn bit off with a hacksaw. To look at it you cant even tell its been modded, plus adding the cover over the LNB part back adds a bit more protection against the ellements.

As far as signal goes I cant honestly say I can see a significant improvement, most sats still give the same signal strength as they did before with my Invacom C120.

However, and this is the biggy. It goes a hell of a long way towards addressing my signal issues between 11590 and 11680 in the low band and 12400 to 12480 in the high band.

These issues are still caused by the vbox and at some point I do intend to construct a Faraday cage for it. But because this new LNB is very high gain it seems it now gives enough signal for the box to cope at these frequencies, albeit at a lower strength than the rest of the channels on this sat and other sats at these frequencies. Again this loss is due to the vbox and the noise it creates.

So all in all its worth the money just for that improvement. TV10 on 1W at 12437H was by far the worst for this and always gave pixelations and breakups, but now it seems perfectly watchable.

I read on here that this LNB gives best improvements in the rain, so once it rains again I will test this out.

Ian.

[ian]

Has anyone successfully optimised the skew on 1W without it have a detrimental effect on the rest of the sats in the arc ?

Or am I flogging a dead horse ?

I really miss the skew settings we all used to have before universal LNB's became the norm.

Ian.

[ian]

Made up with this new LNB.

Its giving me 67% signal on all of the footie feeds today on 3E from a 1.2M dish near Manchester. The cut off threshold on my VU box was always about 49% anything lower than that and the signal would start to break up, but its also lowered this cut off threshold to about 43% too. So I now have loads of signal spare for all the footie feeds on 3E and all other feeds as well.

I would highly recommend it to anyone thinking about getting a new one.

How are you finding yours Catseye ?

Ian.

[catseye]

Made up with this new LNB.

Its giving me 67% signal on all of the footie feeds today on 3E from a 1.2M dish near Manchester. The cut off threshold on my VU box was always about 49% anything lower than that and the signal would start to break up, but its also lowered this cut off threshold to about 43% too. So I now have loads of signal spare for all the footie feeds on 3E and all other feeds as well.

I would highly recommend it to anyone thinking about getting a new one.

How are you finding yours Catseye ?

Ian.

Ive not tested it yet
My dish is on the side of the house so 100 times harder due to access to change over
Plus didn't help going to the pub Friday & Saturday night
Meaning no motivation to do it

[3tv]

skew should only be used on a fixed dish. on a motor the skew is taken care of as the dish tracks the arc. Just align it so it looks plumb at 0 deg

i need to install my single input at some point. Maybe the Long bank holiday weekend coming

[ian]

skew should only be used on a fixed dish. on a motor the skew is taken care of as the dish tracks the arc. Just align it so it looks plumb at 0 deg

This is definitely not true.

Years back we had skew adjustment on our motorised dishes not just per sat but on a per channel basis on the higher end boxes. The skew setting was only phased out when universal LNB's became the norm and when most sats became much stronger, meaning the skew setting was less important.
Skew is needed because there is no up and down in space. Sat operators do try to align the sats to the arc so they are all level but they are not always successfull. In theory what you say is correct ( but only if your location was directly on the Meridion line ) however in practice it simply isnt. I remember a sat called kopernikas that was notorious for being out of alignment with the rest and the skew for this sat had to be set a good 10 degrees different to the others.

If you peak the skew on 1W then go to 28E you will see a significant drop in signal and the same visa versa. For the most part most sats are not too badly out of alignment, but 1W is the exception. Its impossible to maximise reception from this sat without it causing a drop in signal to the rest. Basically, you have to adjust the skew to have less than peak performance on all other sats, to get a higher signal level on 1W. An unhappy medium so to speak. This is why I really miss boxes still having skew settings.

If you dont believe me go to 1W and adjust the skew so you get the strongest possible signal, the try 28E and you will absolutely see less signal than you normally do.

Ian.