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Astra 2E/2F Technical Thread


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And then, as if by magic, they are all back again, 3 hours later. Same for the other ex-pats down here so it wasn't my set up. Most, including me, down here in Herault are using 1.1 metre dishes and they have been fine, usually, slight wobble with HD channels in the evenings. This is the first time everything went including Sky. Anyway now got the beeb back so happy bunny.
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Unfortunatly you have not fixed the problem and it will happen again and again and again as it has with us. Can you imagine what would happen if this was going on in the UK? Actually it did which is why they tilted it. Really you are looking at either 130 or 150cm dish (most probably the latter) to have no problems at all 27/7.
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Q always thought you were from another planet, obviously one that has 27 hours in a day :)

We are all to blame for this and should have used code, for instance if you have reception report that you have not and vice versa. That way the broadcasters would have thought they had cut us off and not tilted the signal more to cut us off now.
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Ah well sometimes it does feel like a 27 hour day. [;-)]

I doubt they are doing it to spite us. Interestingly my BIL down in Spain at La Manga gets perfect reception with a 120cm dish whereas the other BIL in Denia (Spain again) needs a 2M dish to get everything OK. I keep reading all sorts of reasons as to why this is, all of them different of course and with no 'logical' explanation although I did like the theory of interference from the alien space ship still tucked away inside Pech de Bugarach that is waiting for the end of the world.

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Wils

Very odd this reception thingy, I am also in Herault, about 3/4 hour north of Montpellier. We have an 80cm dish and have never experienced any problems except when there is an orage  or very heavy rain, just as well or there may be complaints from you know who!!!!

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  • 2 weeks later...
Hi Théière

What type of meter are you using? Does it allow you to enter the transponder number? If so try 78, works fine for me down here and I have installed about 12 dishes for folk. Could 80cm be too small, I'm installing 1.1 Metre.
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What frequency is the box searching on?

You can try something on the pan Europe beam which should be easy to find

assuming you can search on a particular frequency.....

try 12633 horizontal dvb-s 22000 5/6

or

12207 vertical  dvb-s 27500 2/3

Danny

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In my neck of the woods we have just tried a 150cm dish and that does not work and I am not unique. Next size up is a 180cm but people are put off by the price and installation. Still what with football and all the other rubbish perhaps we won't miss much and what we do we can download.

Anyway if you can't find it then you need a bigger dish. Even if you find it with one of the channels thats on a wide beam still means you may not get any picture on the 'normal' channels.

If you watch 'Click' on the BBC the other week the said they were looking at better control on the Iplayer i.e. you will need a valid licence number to get into it at some point in the future. They are trialing it with around a 1000 homes at present.

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Just using the cheap signal strength meter, can't answer the frequency/transponder question as I didn't make a note of it and hoping that down here in Tours 80cm would be sufficient. Back in France next week and wanting success this time.

Most, bearing in mind I have done all the relatives dishes are still using Sky on Astra 1E but so few channels on the free service from Sky has prompted the change. I have a lot of kit for swimming pools but not so much for other things, I would have thought I could have at least got a beep out of the Signal strength meter if I had located the satellite even if the strength had been too low for reception?

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I used to have that app but deleted it, I have just downloaded it again as I don't want another repeat next week.  I could understand if the quality was well down with a small dish but I would still have expected to locate the satellite. Is 80cm too small in the Loire valley?

Appreciate the help from everyone, thank you.

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I'm probably stating the obvious but you said you moved eastwards (19 -> 28).   But did you tip the dish down as well?   It's not a huge amount but if it was a little high even for Astra 1 it may well be considerably too high for Astra 2.

Apologies if I'm involving grandmothers doing bizarre things to eggs.

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Not at all stating the obvious Martin, as you know it should be over there at that angle (28 east) and moving up and down a little should get a response but when that fails all sorts of mad suggestions from the audience!  "on our house we pointed the dish NW " where were you Australia? it then gets even sillier, don't like an audience when I am trying to concentrate even a well meaning one [;-)] adding beer doesn't help either!

It's the first time I have ever failed to find the satellite so I began to wonder about the footprint et al.

Do you think it maybe possible to receive UK channels via a satellite in the USA (New York) ?

Never tell another man how to light his fire, bound to cause an argument/upset. So it seems does aligning a sat dish [:D]

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Well on one famous occasion I waved a dish around for twenty minutes up on a ladder,  having totally failed to spot that the cable had fallen out of the F connector and wondering why I couldn't get anything.

I must say that if all else fails (such as checking for tree shadow) I do find dishpointer makes a useful long-stop.   I was recently setting up on 27.5 deg W (just out of interest,  I can get what's on there by the normal means!) and from our Devon site finding a suitable path in that direction through the trees is challenging.   But dishpointer allowed me to predict not only where to put the dish in the first place but where to point it.

Odd what's going on with you though - try it again when you've had further beers..!

As to New York,  the answer (at least for Astra 2) is no.   Partly because of the footprint and partly because it would be below the horizon.   For practical purposes you can see the satellite belt for about 50 deg either side of due south of wherever you happen to be,  so for France and Britain very roughly you can get satellites between 45 deg W and 45 deg E of the Greenwich meridian.

Move to New York and you'd very roughly get 32 deg W to 122 W (quick calc open to correction) so you might JUST have got Hispasat  (30 deg W) in terms of visibility,  but the European beam would of course be too weak.   There's an American beam but I have a feeling that's pointed more at Brazil.  In any case no free to air BBC on that,  but it gives you an idea of how far east a "European" satellite is once you're the other side of the Atlantic.

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Those cheap meters do not measure only one transponder frequency, but the total combined energy that the LNB receives within the selected quadrant. The quadrant being horizontal or vertical polarisation in the high or low frequency band. The quadrant is selected by the receiver when you select a channel. Just turn the amplification of the cheap meter up until the needle is pointing in the middle and keep it there. That should always be possible, even without reception. If you cannot get the needle in the middle, the meter is either malfunctioning or connected the wrong way round.

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Thanks both, I will be at it next week again, yes Jako meter is working correctly, it me that's has the fault!  the signal is so strong on the Astra1E that when desperate I keep finding that but know I need to go left to 28 deg, I will aim down a few degrees after Martin's suggestion but I have loaded that app back on the smart phone. I did try two different LNB's just in case.

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Today's conundrum. I use a Satlink WS 6908 meter and with this, set on transponder 78 I have happily installed about a dozen dishes around here achieving a good signal, usually within about 10 minutes or less. Today I have spent about 3 hours on my gite roof with the same size dish I have been installing and have got nothing! I took the meter up to the house and tried it on our telly which has a great signal and.............it reads nothing. Connections to the meter are all fine as is the battery, other than the thing has totally packed up any other ideas?
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  • 3 weeks later...
Now I am confused!

Returned to france with a new telly, and LG, LED job. turns out it has a satellite decoder built in, (I knew it had freeview).  Got a youngling to set it up whilst doing other things and got " it's found the Astra 2 satellite and you have over 200 free channels"  all without moving the dish from Astra 1, 19 deg??? how can that happen?? still it's working so haven't touched it. [8-)]

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Ok this is how I think it works.

When you switched the TV on the first time it goes into setup mode and you select the country and language. By setting the country the respective EPG (electronic program guide I think it means) is used and it look for the respective frequencies. So if you selected France it will look for the EPG for Astra 1 @ 19.2 deg so you should have France 1 (HD) as the first channel and as it goes on with first French channels then there are loads of other language channels including Arabic etc and BBC World. If you factory reset the TV and set the country to UK it won't find anything because it will look for Astra 2.

Thats how I understand it works, I might be wrong. Our old Philips that only worked through the arial had different tuners and when we came to France we did a Factory reset and  told it we were in France. It then used the French tunner and we could watch French TV on SECAM it also had the American option and would use the NTSC tuner (thin thats the name). I suspect the TV you bought is 'International' and will work in any country using the EPG for that country.

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