Astra 2G: Scandinavia & Baltics Reports

[4wd]

2G UK is down a little here from the tops a while ago, but still much better than 2F UK was.

When the signal is good, any and every old LNB is working perfect here, for the very marginal evening levels the differences between LNB's become major, as every % quality counts. Best so far is still the Maximum single, see https://www.satellites.co.uk/forums...general-discussion.165653/page-20#post-934299.

Somehow LNB always been a little off towards L (manufacturing), finally got around to fixing it. Squeezed out a few Q %'s making it point to vertical center, prolonging R arm then readjusting dish. See picture.

 

[archive10]

Quick update (after alleged move to 2G for some transponders):
Overcast, heavy rain earlier in the day (moist air).
Eveythng still working fine here north of Copenhagen/DK on CM180/BUQuattro:
BBC etc as usual, CBS channels booming in, ITV going very well.

No significant change in user experience after 2G.

Prompted by discussions on dish size requirements on a local DK forum, I have measured the reception of 2G on the CM100 with the Inverto Red Single LNB.

First tried the old Pace Sky+ box (non-2600) last week, this seemed to work ok, with some pixellation here and there (afternoon).
Then this morning (10am) reception was fine on 2E/F, so I hooked up the Humax HDR-1010S, and even the 2G stuff (HD) came in fine. Cbeebies HD, BBC News HD, and CH4 HD London.
No pixellation, no break-up, no clicks. Quite unusual.

This is somewhat at odds on what many other people experience with 100cm dishes in the Copenhagen area.
@Frederik M seems to have more similar results, but due to his lattitude and the tilt of the beam, his slightly better results are to be expected.

To get a feel for signal quality, I hooked up the computer, and did a scan through the TBS5922.
Crazyscan identified the 11024 transponder, and bringing up the carrer seatch window gave me 7-7,7 dB S/N!
BUT, there was BER>0, and the S/N as fluctuating a bit.
Sure enough, back on the HDR-1010S, the pictures of 11023 now (11:30 CET) starting pixellating.

SO, the point is that 2E/F spot beams are actually quite fine on the Humax on a CM100 for most if not all of the day, but 2G is more difficult.
This, at last, harmonises with what others in this thread are seeing.

 

[archive10]

Yesterday evening I lost 4seven (earlier I have lost ITV HD). Had to try to adjust my antenna this morning. Now I have both 4seven and ITV HD with stable reception 9,7 dB. The value on BBC News HD however went down from 9,3 to 8,3 dB.
What I did was move my antenna sligthly to the west. All channels on 2E are weaker now but there is still a margin. The horisontals are (as usual) the weakest. BBC London (10773 H) is at the same level as ITV HD 9,7 dB but used to be around 11 dB. BBC HD (10847 V) is at 11,3 dB. Maybe it's necessary to compromise between the three (2E/F/G). After my last adjustment F and G has gained signal and E has lost some. Will see tonight when the signals usually are weaker how it looks.
Maybe some more skew adjustement will be necessary.

My CM180 with BUQuattro has been aimed at 2D since the dish was first put up.
2D being several configurations of sats in the past, I am wondering wether I too could optimise reception.

(danger being the old adage: "If it ain't broke...")

To start with, I measured the current performance to compare with yours.
To get proper readings, I borrowed the Promax meter again for the task.
LNB is Black Ultra Quattro through a EMP Centauri multiswitch:

11023H 8,4 dB (BBC News HD / 2G)
10773H 12,5 dB (BBC1 / 2E)
10847V 10,5 dB (BBC HD / 2E)

Observations (not scientific, but interesting):
- I take the 2E horizontals better (10773).
- The 2G horizontals are about the same (11023).
- You do the 2E vertical better.

I think the interesting question is: Where should we point the dish? Where's the sweet spot of compromise between 2E and 2G?
(TBH, there's nothing interesting on 2F ATM for me.)

 

[timo_w2s]

Just for fun I set up an old 42cm Sky zone 1 dish with a Sky Visiblewave Quad looking at 28E on my balcony in Helsinki and was able to pick up all the Astra 2G Europe transponders with no problem. Obviously all other transponders where not receivable. Not even a flicker from 2E Europe or 2F Europe.

Here are the results on my DrHD F15:

65 11.082H - 22.0 5/6 - 11.0dB
67 11.112H - 22.0 5/6 - 11.0dB
69 11.141H - 22.0 5/6 - 11.1dB
71 11.171H - 22.0 5/6 - 11.4dB
105 11.224H - 27.5 2/3 - 9.6dB
106 11.225V - 27.5 2/3 - 9.3dB
107 11.264H - 27.5 2/3 - 9.8dB
108 11.265V - 27.5 2/3 - 9.3dB
89 11.464H - 22.0 5/6 - 10.3dB
90 11.479V - 22.0 5/6 - 9.9dB
92 11.509V - 22.0 5/6 - 9.2dB
94 11.538V - 23.0 2/3 - 9.1dB
95 11.553H - 22.0 5/6 - 9.0dB
96 11.568V - 22.0 5/6 - 7.8dB
97 11.582H - 22.0 5/6 - 8.9dB
98 11.597V - 23.0 8/9 - 9.2dB
103 11.671H - 22.0 5/6 - 10.1dB
104 11.686V - 22.0 5/6 - 10.1dB

On the 5/6 FEC transponders the receiver starts to breakup at around 5.5dB so there's a reasonable amount of signal. With the 2/3 FEC transponders there even more reserve signal with breakup starting under 4dB.

For comparison I also swung the dish over to some other satellites:

19E: 8-11dB
13E: 6-10dB
5E: 4A Nordic 10-13dB, 4A Europe 7-10dB, SES5 10-11dB
1W: Nordic 9-13dB, K2 8-9dB, T2 10-11dB, Thor 7 12dB, Spot 3 4-6dB

 

[4wd]

^^^ so you can watch Frankenstein from 1957 on Horror Ch. :O)
2G EU is very strong here as well. But uk is struggling hard lately in the evenings, yesterday total blackout, levels went into the cellar, incl 2e\f uk. Let's see how it goes, got my eyes on a sh Gibertini 150 available nearby...

 

[timo_w2s]

^^^ so you can watch Frankenstein from 1957 on Horror Ch. :O)

Hey hey, don't knock it. ;) There's actually a decent selection of channels on 2G Europe at the moment considering I wasn't expecting anything to be available once 28A and 2A left so I'm more than happy.

If I get really bored I'll reposition my BSB 35cm dish (currently on 1W) and see how well that works with 2G...

 

[4wd]

^^^ Was a joke, of course agree about availability of many good programs on eu, am a fan of 'good' (the worse the better) b-films, vintage stuff & old series (Star Trek among others), spending quite some time on CBS Action & Horror. Travel channel + Pick is also fine to have available. And a vast amount of other things available for many interests.

 

[archive10]

Major crisis this morning, as SWMBO tried to watch the recording of the first episode of the new X factor UK series.
She set it to record on ITV HD - and the result was bad pixellation for 5 seconds, then broken recording due to loss of signal...

Checked reception, and yes it is not good on 2G:11023H on the Humax FoxSat.

Two weeks ago, I loosened the bolts on the CM180 and re-adjusted for max signals.
The existing pointing was to maximise 2D reception 4 years ago.
I was thinking that I could get a good compromise, and as 2E seemed most difficul of 2E/F/G, I max'ed it out on 2E:10773H
This seemed to give me decent levels across the board, so I tightened everything up.

Now I am not so sure.
The 2G stuff comes in badly now.
Can someone confirm the positions of the 2E/F/G triumvirate?
Several postings have 2E at 28.5E, and 2G at 28.2E. Where is 2F?

SO; question: Where should we be max'ing our dishes?
Is there an in-the-middle (e.g. 2F), or should we be see-saw'ing between 2G and 2E to get best compromise?

I adressed the problem at hand by changing series recording to ITV London SD (on 2E), but I am keen on getting the best alignment with the current sat-configuration at 28.xE.

 

[timo_w2s]

Well, officially 2G and 2F are co-located at 28.2E and 2E is at 28.5E and from playing around with dishes in Finland it would seem to be the case.

 

[Nalleman]

Well I checked the values right now and 2G is just a tiny bit weaker than this time yesterday.
11 023 H now 10,0 dB, yesterday 10,5 dB. 11 097 V 10,2 dB now and 10,5 dB yesterday.
2E is a slightly bit down compared to yesterday too but not much 0,2-0,4 dB.

I have put my antenna at 28,35 with 2E beeing around 28,5 most of the time and 2F and 2G at 28,2 but drifting towards 28,15 sometimes (specially 2F). At 28,35 I manage to keep all channels 24/7 even in bad weather, The weakest bird is 2F but it comes in at around 10,0 dB most of the time. (The European beam of course much stronger at around 14,5 dB.) I could get at stronger signal on 2E (up to about 13,7 dB on the strongest TP:s but I am satiesfied with 12,3 dB which leaves a lot of margin). On 10 773 H I get 11,3 dB instead of 12,0 dB. If I optimize the dish for 2E I will only get around 7,7 dB maximum on 2G (and even less on 2F) meaning loss of ITV HD, 4 Seven in the evening. 28,35 seems to be the perfect spot to be able to get all three birds even with a big dish as mine.

I use this site for up to date location data of the three birds: http://www.satellite-calculations.com/Satellite/satellitelist.php#XTAR-EUR

As far as I have understood 2E will stay at 28,5 and 2F and 2E will be at 28,2. Lyngsat lists 2E at 28,5 and the other two at 28,2 as do Eutelsat: http://www.eutelsat.com/home/satellites/the-fleet/282285-east/eutelsat-28e-downlink.html

 

[bema]

Due to an disk crash I moved my website. The reception of astra2 in Western part of Sweden can be found here:

Astra 2E/2F, 28.2 East Monitoring

 

[RimaNTSS]

The reception of astra2 in Western part of Sweden can be found here

Hi Bema! What equipment do you use to get data for your graphs?

 

[bema]

Hi Bema! What equipment do you use to get data for your graphs?

TBS6985 card and some scriptig, mostly in PHP

 

[Marti]

Stockholm, Sweden I am getting nothing from Astra 2G UK Spot - 2.4M Channelmaster/Andrews/Raven dish. New inverto black ultra quad. Will try sometime soon with invacom qdf. (but 2e UK does work ok)

 

[archive10]

Stockholm, Sweden I am getting nothing from Astra 2G UK Spot - 2.4M Channelmaster/Andrews/Raven dish. New inverto black ultra quad. Will try sometime soon with invacom qdf. (but 2e UK does work ok)

I don't think the change of LNB will make that much a difference.
As has been determined on this and other boards, the IBUQ is the de facto standard for receiving 2x in Scandinavia.
If you get nothing at all, then you're probably not going to go from nothing to everything just swapping LNB.
The only point where the Invacom might be better is resolving cross-polarisation, but this only applies to a few of the 2G transponders AFAIK.

But it's worth trying - if you have one lying around.

Three (probably silly) questions, as you seem to be fairly adept at tuning the dish:

1) did you get a CM feedhorn with the dish?
2) do you have a proper meter (showing BER or MER)?
3) did you squeeze the last drops of skew out of the LNB when trying the IBUQ?

 

[4wd]

the IBUQ is the de facto standard

Not here, have tried a bunch of lnb's, best (-on my marginal dish-) is Maximum xo-11 single, keeps stable picture from weak signals long after my IBU quads go black.

Example, swapping lnb's on same transp., same time\weather, when UK signals show the standard evenings drop here, the IBUQ may (on my usual receiver) go to approx 40% Q then dies (= 3 hours of black screen), while the xo-11 keeps on churning out a picture down to 30% Q before giving up (= receiving some channel all evening). No amount of adjusting or fiddling helps, the xo-11 wins.

Planning to test IBU single \ duo some day to compare with the maximum.

 

[archive10]

Not here, have tried a bunch of lnb's, best (-on my marginal dish-) is Maximum xo-11 single, keeps stable picture from weak signals long after my IBU quads go black.

Example, swapping lnb's on same transp., same time\weather, when UK signals show the standard evenings drop here, the IBUQ may (on my usual receiver) go to approx 40% Q then dies (= 3 hours of black screen), while the xo-11 keeps on churning out a picture down to 30% Q before giving up (= receiving some channel all evening). No amount of adjusting or fiddling helps, the xo-11 wins.

Planning to test IBU single \ duo some day to compare with the maximum.

Good point!
My XO-11 didn't peform as well as the IBUQ, but almost as well, so it is a very worthy contender.
Since you are closer to the Stockholm-strafing null, it might work better for @Marti.
And it's rather cheap to try!

But nevertheless, he has no picture at all ATM, so miracles are doubtful 8(

 

[skomedal]

Maximum

Also best here, will try to find thread and post no. tomorrow

Regards

 

[4wd]

Also best here

That's interesting ! + st1 gives xo-11 a good mention, and they cost 'nothing' :O)

(st1, sorry for editing after you quoted, but content very similar)

 

[archive10]

That's interesting ! + st1 gives xo-11 a good mention, and they cost 'nothing' :O)

(st1, sorry for editing after you quoted, but content very similar)

Not a problem - just edited it to include your edits...