If anyone has come here because of problems with this Fortec Star, then I might be able to re-assure you. I have a Sky fixed oval dish of about 10 years age. The card which I acquired after one years subscription gave me 9 years of free channel viewing. I used Freeview to record time delayed programmes. The Sky card stopped working recently losing Five (no great loss, but annoying). So I decided FreeSat was the way to go. I bought the Humax Foxstat-HDR 500Gb. Connected it to the Sky LNB and dish and it worked just fine. As it has two tuners, I re-cabled with twin cables in a more direct route round the front of the house and bought a Quad LNB, the dreaded Fortec Star FSKU4VN. I found it very frustrating to get any signal worth having from the FreeSat satellite. Very temperamental.
So after a frustrating day up the ladder, I gave up and spent a day looking on the net for a solution. What was I doing wrong? I came to the conclusion that this thread had the answer. I did not realise how important the skew of the LNB was. But when I thought about it,as an ex BBC engineer, the skew is similar to the horizontal and vertical polarisation used on other terrestrial transmissions. The bars on a UHF aerial have to be horizontal because the transmissions are horizontally polarised. The old VHF 405 line transmissions were vertical. But satellites could be twisted in any plane and use vertical and horizontal polarisation anyway to prevent cross channel interference.
So a day later and with your helpful advice about the odd internal skew, I tried again. I discovered that the best ploy was to check the Sky transmission signal strength (not difficult to get 100%) and the maximum Quality figure (I got 100%) and then FreeSat would find its channels properly. Although I get 100% signal strength on FreeSat, I found it difficult and very temperamental to get more than 60%, however on the Diagnostics screen on the Humax it shows nearly 90% on both Tuners. I am convinced that the oval dish not matching the shape of the LNB aerial (round) is the reason why the results are not perfect. I am sure a round and larger dish would improve matters. I come to the conclusion that Sky transmissions are more powerful than FreeSat, albeit from the same satellite. Am I right?
I had used the SatLex site to calculate the correct skew. At my location it should be 15.33deg to the right (clockwise). But if this thread was right it would be in the completely opposite direction. However, my FSKU4VN does NOT appear to have the problem on the rest of this thread. It got the best Quality reading at about 15deg clockwise. So the manufacturer must have sorted it out! The cable outlet is at the correct predicted skew.
So if you are having problems with this LNB, it is more likely the extreme sensitivity to the physical movement of the LNB is causing the signal to be very variable, rather than an offset angle error.
Just thought I would let you know that....
If my old oval dish proves to be a problem with lost channels or signal break ups, I will change to a round one, say 60cm.
