aceb
Specialist Contributor
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2007
- Messages
- 1,537
- Reaction score
- 841
- Points
- 113
- My Satellite Setup
-
Prof Tuner 7301 /
1.25m Gibertini + Inverto B.Ultra/C1W, Moteck H180, 68.5E-67W Ku/C-Band /
1.8m Precision PF + ESX241/Inverto Black Pro, 66E-63W Ku/C-band /
2.4m Fortec Star+Titanium C1W/Pride plate, 49E-58W
- My Location
- Sussex
I swapped to the Ku feed on my 1.8m yesterday and as things didn't go quite as expected I thought I'd write it all down! I'd made some notes when I set the dish up so already knew that RASD on 45W should be reading 84/100 SQ (up from 77/100 on the 1m Gibertini). So I swapped over feeds, jiggery poked the software to get Ku on the 2nd port of the switch and was a little disappointed to find it was showing 77/100! Back up the garden with the laptop and remote software, check the LNB position, the feed, skew, poked the dish but nothing would increase it. Checked the BBC on 1W and again it was a similar level to one on the 1m.
Brainwave, maybe its loss in the 30m of RG6 so once again I set up the kit at the dish and decided to use a really short run of CT125 to see just how much signal I could get out of it. The only length I could find in the garage was from an old aerial that I'd used last year outside. Each end of the coax was badly tarnished due to the weather getting in so I cut off about 2ft from each end, stripped back the sheath to reveal nice shiny braid and foil, fitted some F plugs and connected to the dish. I then went through the same 20 or so signals making more notes of the signal strengths, this time some were stronger, a few were weaker, some the same and one had disappeared completely! Right, back to basics, use the same 10m length of RG6 I used last week to set it up, connected it up and everything had increased with RASD and BBC World being back to what they were at the initial set up. Final test was to fit a 4m length of CT100 and it squeezed a little more signal out of everything across the board.
So, hence the title of the thread and the moral of this story, don't presume coax is good just because it looks OK, although I can't see anything wrong with it I'm assuming moisture has got in, maybe in the air spacing and is causing the strange results.
Some figures for anyone interested, I must add that a tree partially obscures satellites further east than 25deg, first column is taken in doors on the end of 30m of RG6 and through a switch. the second column is through the short length of CT100. The first figure is signal level, arbitrary number really, nothing locks lower than about 68!
36.0E 11025H 75/058 79/094
26.0E 11938V 80/042 88/062
25.5E 11040V 73/100 78/100
21.6E 11344H 79/055 89/058
04.8E 12399V 82/050 94/100
03.0E 12640V 70/077 78/094
07.0W 12303H 75/075 83/082
07.3W 12476V 75/100 87/100
11.0W 11686H 69/090 76/100
37.5W 11063V 82/100 92/100
45.0W 11607H 75/100 85/100
According to Crazyscan 75/100 equates to 11.1dB S/N or -40.83dBw
85/100 is 15.3dB S/N or -39.7 dBw
Overall the weakest locking transponders I could find were on 26E but I'm not sure how much attentuation I'm getting through the tree
11727H
11804H
12635V
All came in around 83/7 S/N. It's annoying about the tree, the most marginal signals like 25.5/30./31.5 are all obscured unless someone can suggest others worth looking for? 36E is out too so no chance of the Sub Saharan beam.
Wod mentioned on my original install thread about 7W so here's the stats, on 7.0W and using the data from Lyngsat I've totalled 286 TV and 98 radio stations with nothing from all 8 transponders on Nilesat 201 but all the others on 101 and 102. 7.3W has 589 TV and 56 radio and missing just 11564H. The weakest transponder is 11156V.
So, the obvious thing to do now as a dedicated DXer is to replace the RG6 with new CT125 or better but it's almost worth considering building a small form factor PC at the dish end and running in power and LAN, streaming via VLC and reconfigure Cscan to stream to this PC instead.
Brainwave, maybe its loss in the 30m of RG6 so once again I set up the kit at the dish and decided to use a really short run of CT125 to see just how much signal I could get out of it. The only length I could find in the garage was from an old aerial that I'd used last year outside. Each end of the coax was badly tarnished due to the weather getting in so I cut off about 2ft from each end, stripped back the sheath to reveal nice shiny braid and foil, fitted some F plugs and connected to the dish. I then went through the same 20 or so signals making more notes of the signal strengths, this time some were stronger, a few were weaker, some the same and one had disappeared completely! Right, back to basics, use the same 10m length of RG6 I used last week to set it up, connected it up and everything had increased with RASD and BBC World being back to what they were at the initial set up. Final test was to fit a 4m length of CT100 and it squeezed a little more signal out of everything across the board.
So, hence the title of the thread and the moral of this story, don't presume coax is good just because it looks OK, although I can't see anything wrong with it I'm assuming moisture has got in, maybe in the air spacing and is causing the strange results.
Some figures for anyone interested, I must add that a tree partially obscures satellites further east than 25deg, first column is taken in doors on the end of 30m of RG6 and through a switch. the second column is through the short length of CT100. The first figure is signal level, arbitrary number really, nothing locks lower than about 68!
36.0E 11025H 75/058 79/094
26.0E 11938V 80/042 88/062
25.5E 11040V 73/100 78/100
21.6E 11344H 79/055 89/058
04.8E 12399V 82/050 94/100
03.0E 12640V 70/077 78/094
07.0W 12303H 75/075 83/082
07.3W 12476V 75/100 87/100
11.0W 11686H 69/090 76/100
37.5W 11063V 82/100 92/100
45.0W 11607H 75/100 85/100
According to Crazyscan 75/100 equates to 11.1dB S/N or -40.83dBw
85/100 is 15.3dB S/N or -39.7 dBw
Overall the weakest locking transponders I could find were on 26E but I'm not sure how much attentuation I'm getting through the tree
11727H
11804H
12635V
All came in around 83/7 S/N. It's annoying about the tree, the most marginal signals like 25.5/30./31.5 are all obscured unless someone can suggest others worth looking for? 36E is out too so no chance of the Sub Saharan beam.
Wod mentioned on my original install thread about 7W so here's the stats, on 7.0W and using the data from Lyngsat I've totalled 286 TV and 98 radio stations with nothing from all 8 transponders on Nilesat 201 but all the others on 101 and 102. 7.3W has 589 TV and 56 radio and missing just 11564H. The weakest transponder is 11156V.
So, the obvious thing to do now as a dedicated DXer is to replace the RG6 with new CT125 or better but it's almost worth considering building a small form factor PC at the dish end and running in power and LAN, streaming via VLC and reconfigure Cscan to stream to this PC instead.
