Funny issue with the Free Sat 7HD yesterday - so please can anyone explain the following:
On Saturday, CH came over, sorted out the dish alignment issue (turned out it was the Elevation and not the Declination that was "off", even though I had set the former to "my latitude" according the scale on the motor!), and then ran a new CT125 cable from the dish to the receivers in the "Office", following by some comparative testing on Signal Strength , Character Noise and Bit Error Rates with both existing and new cables - and got the levels much better with the new cable.
Later, I had little difficulty in getting the Dakar 1 & 2 channels on the TM5402 M3, but the audio levels were, as previously, very low, so yesterday afternoon I switched to the Free Sat and - after having a lot of trouble finding the Dakar channels (had to delete 10E and reinstall it, manually add the relevant transponder numbers and then rescan the satellite) - I got them working at good levels.
HOWEVER, for the first 5-10 minutes on Dakar 1 & 2, the picture was an almost totally blank & weird "pink" colour except at the top edge, then it very gradually cleared and stabilised, and was fine after that - even when I tuned away from that channel or even to another satellite and then back again, the picture cleared almost immediately every time.
I realise that it can take a short time for a receiver to stabilise on a channel, but what I saw yesterday seems an unusually long period.
NB: didn't see the same effects on any other channel on 10E or elsewhere.
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