Jako

You are not alone. A guy in north-east Italy went from 0 yesterday  to 80% this morning. Maybe the switched back to 1N[:)] edit: checked German reception and they only see gradual improvement. So the signal is not back on 1N,  it might just be due to the slight swinging of the satellite that has a major impact in the south-east.The swing-period seems to be around 3-4 hours.

Check here: http://en.kingofsat.net/pack-orange.php It looks like 13e offers less channels, e.g. all the France3 local stations. 5 west adds a few French FTA channels, so I guess that would give best value for money.

As far as we know nothing has changed overnight. Indeed because the forums are still operational [:)] All Astra satellites have a different skew than all the other satellites, don't know why. The skew has not changed, but a weaker signal may simply need finetuning of both dish and lnb for many installations.

BBC does not even need to know, nothing changes for them either. Everybody is expecting a big changeover this night, most likely all 6 BBC transponders. Let's hope we'll not be disappointed. But we only know for sure when a lot of people suddenly loose reception and they will not be happy.

Yes, channels cannot be available on both satellites. All parameters remain the same, the whole operation is invisible to the ordinary customer. (us)

For me 11023 fluctuates between 14.5 dB in the morning and 13.0 dB in the evening. At the same time the 'official' BBC1 HD remains stable at 13.7-13.8 dB. Both totally acceptable, but 2F has a much bigger fluctuation in signal.

What we could be observing is the slight and slow movement of the satellite itself. You normally only observe that in the outer fringe area's, but it could be worse now due to the extreme sharp signal-cutoff they have implemented. That would explain why no variation is measured in the UK, but a lot is seen in the rest of Europe.

Check again later. All over Europe the signal dropped in the afternoon, except inside the spotbeam. Maybe they were/are still tweaking or this beam's  fringe reception is more related to the sun and weather than before.

All 'normal' channels are still on 1N. As far as I know it is (nearly-) impossible to force a skybox to scan one frequency. Only 'normal'[:)] receivers can do that. All others will have to wait a little,  Saturday morning is presumed...

Preliminary reports seem to indicate that the signal is better to the south than to the east of the official beam.

As you go north the curb of the planet has this effect. That is why a still strong signal reaches Iceland, but the satellite is just a few degrees above the horizon there. Moving south this effect diminishes, but it will not reverse. Seen from the satellite that part of the planet looks flat. However, the design of the satellite's dish can completely alter the way the beam is projected and how sharp the signal falloff outside the beam will be.  They have multiple ways of doing this, the signal is reflected two times before it reaches the dish that sends the signal down to us. Minute changes in the shape of each reflector will make a big difference for us. Maybe they even have the ability to do this remote with this satellite. I do not know.

N2YO does not know yet that the satellite hit the brakes at 28.2. [:)] All geostationary satellites are located at about 36.000 km's above the equator.  28.2 East is not a relative position, but the absolute position above east Congo. You can do the math: how high does an object have to fly in order to rotate round the earth in 24 hours given the planets gravity of 9.8 m/s2.[:P]

The new bird is flying: --------------- Luxembourg – November 21, 2012 – SES S.A. (Euronext Paris and Luxembourg Stock Exchange: SESG) announced today that the ASTRA 2F satellite has successfully completed its in-orbit testing and is now fully operational and in commercial service at the orbital neighborhood of 28.2/28.5 degrees East. The 52nd SES satellite was successfully launched board an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, on September 28, 2012. ASTRA 2F was built by Astrium in Toulouse using a Eurostar E3000 platform. The multi-mission satellite carries Ku-band and Ka-band payloads for the delivery of high-performance Direct-to-Home (DTH) and next generation broadband services in Europe and Africa. Of the spacecraft's payload, 48 Ku-band transponders cover Europe and 12 Ku-band transponders are dedicated to sub-Saharan Africa, while 3 Ka-band transponders will allow SES Broadband Services to support download speeds of up to 20 Mbps. ASTRA 2F is part of a larger fleet replacement and expansion programme at the 28.2/28.5 degrees East neighborhood, consisting of ASTRA 2E, 2F and 2G, that provides replacement and growth capacity for the UK and Ireland as well as for other services in and outside of Europe. ASTRA 2E and ASTRA 2G, also under construction with Astrium, are scheduled for launch in 2013 and 2014 respectively. ------------- But nobody will know for sure any transponders is operational on 2F until they tell us.[8-)]

As any non-British economist in Europe will tell you: 'The Economist' is right about France, but it oversees the even bigger problems in the UK. The UK is not even paying the coupon on gilts that were 'bought' by the BoE with the £ 375 BILLION they created out of thin air. That is in fact a technical default and the correct rating of the UK should now be 'D' . It will not be long before the UK loses its first A. (beginning 2013) As a British exit from the EU is now becoming more and more unavoidable, the City will lose its business to banks based in 'Euroland'. The potential risk alone is already hurting business and it will not stop.

The new bird will arrive tomorrow early in the morning. Time to start a perpetual blindscan for a new signal if your decoder can do that. Or else wait for the first report by others. Playtime[:D]

And what product is he selling exactly? FaVal Germany makes a product with the same specs, just not in steel but alu. It weighs 4.9 kilo instead of 9.5 . click I can't find a black steel version on their website.

More media are now reporting that all BBC transponders will move to 2F this month. Just two more weeks...[:)]

No, nobody can until 2f is operational. The biggest extra 'tech' problem that 2f might introduce is re-using the same frequencies on both spot-beams. The beams being the UK and West-Africa beam. In between the spotbeams you will receive both signals and no matter the dish size, you will be unable to block the 'wrong' transmission. But that will never be a problem in France.

First: do not make any investment until 2f is operational. The Inverto black ultra is indeed currently widely considered one of the best lnb's and not expensive. (outside France..[;-)].) And they improve signal quality in fringe area's. An offset dish is a cheap way to move the LNB out of the incoming energy beam so the LNB itself will not cast a 'shadow'.  This means more signal for the LNB when using the same dish size compared to a axial dish. So in general this is a good option. But as the dish size gets bigger it will be more difficult to construct it as the focal point moves away from the dish and the length of the arm holding the lnb will get unstable. That is why a 1.2 meter offset dish usually has two extra stabilisation arms. Most people (and even dealers!) are unaware of the fact that a dish is constructed for use of a certain LNB type (not just 'universal')  and using a LNB with a different feedhorn than what the dish was designed for will make the LNB either look outside the dish (receiving more noise) or look only at a part of the dish (receiving less signal). The focal angle of the LNB's feedhorn should be the same as the f/d value of the dish. (usually 0.6), but unfortunately the value is not always published. (f=distance of focal point, d=dish diameter) A good quality dish performs a lot better than the 'Brico' piss-steel dishes. A 80 cm cheap dish usually performs about the same as a 60 cm quality dish. The problem is that the quality and price are not 1:1 related. But buying a brand (triax, visiosat, etc) usually buys better quality than a non-branded dish. As the size of a dish increases the opening angle decreases. That is a good thing because you do not want to receive signals from other satellites that are close to Astra2 position at 28.2e like Astra3 (23.5e) or BADR (26e) especially in fringe area's. But the downside is that it is more difficult to point a bigger dish at the exact location AND make sure it will never move again.  As the dish size increases so does the wind load, so make sure your construction can take the windforce and weight of the dish.

Well, at least we can be quite confident that any reception issue in France can be resolved with a bigger dish. Brits in southern Spain and especially the Canary Islands are becoming more and more worried by the day. As satellite-business imploded, some sellers are now giving 'guarantees' that their equipment will keep working.

True, but not unique for France. This is the worldwide standard procedure and sometimes even visible in your bank account as time passes between crediting the full amount and debiting the difference. This may sometimes takes a full day or more in case of a problem. But  the transaction is always recalculated to the original transaction date/time and therefore usually invisible.

Years ago I had a similar problem. I received a new fuel card from my employer. They were charged € 4,000,000,- for the card instead of € 4,-[:D] It got swiftly mobbed under the carpet because nobody wanted to acknowledge this was even possible.

While we are all waiting for Astra2f to become operational, a serious dispute between SES and Eutelsat is emerging on new frequencies to be used by Astra2f There seems to be an increasing anger about old German rights for a frequency band handed over to French Eutelsat , disputed by Luxemburg's SES Astra and paid for by Brits.[:)] I am not sure about possible copyright, so read here and here One thing is certain: lawyers are going to earn big money.

[quote user="Clair"] Do they do oval 80cm dishes?[8-)] [/quote] Sure, almost all dishes are oval. The difference is that almost the entire world minus the UK use dishes that are oval in the vertical sense. [:)] The hight is larger than the width. The official SES footprint is very conservative. You can use a 45 cm dish in the 60 cm area. A zone 2 dish will do fine just outside the official footprint. But we simply do not know how fast the signal will degrade outside the 60 cm area. SES-Astra  have already tested a spotbeam on astra1 for Poland  that degraded from a 60 cm to a 120 cm dish in just 100 km.  But the  Astra1 position is almost strait above Poland, ideal for a a spotbeam, unlike Astra2 for the UK. Just be patient for another month or two.[kiss]

And again this made-in-France Astra 2F satellite got a perfect launch by a French launch vehicle from a French  spaceport.[:)] It was the 51 consecutive successful launch for the Ariane 5 rocket. The first signals from the Astra2f are expected in November, then we fill finally know what the reception conditions will be for the next 15 years.