Sattelite Problems- Only In France Though

[Litespeed]

Have just returned from France. I carted my dish and all that goes with it so that the kids could watch Powere Rangers and give us some peace and quiet.

Despite attempting for about 3 hours to line up the dish to Astra 2 I had absolutley no joy. I coundint get any figures in the stream settings just 0000 and the same for the other one. The sat signal seemed OK as did the quality. Maybe I was tracked to the wrong sattelite but have never had any problems in the UK. I took my Sky Card from Home (basic Package) that works fine all over the UK.

On my return to the UK I set it all up in the Garden at home and had it working within 1 minute.

Any Ideas what I was doing wrong?

Thanks

Simon (from Cornwall)

 

[stuart_5107319]

Hi Simon

First Q - how big is your dish ?

Regular Sky mini-dish may not be big enough, expecially in the South - caravan mini dish wont be big enough

Also the angle on elevation increases the further South you go - the further East / West you go you the dish needs to be skewed (rotated)

Have you got a compass & finder ?

 

[AndrewWimborne]

Hi. Having set up a Satellite system in France for many years. basically the only things you could have got wrong are: Dish not big enough. The further you go down into France the larger the dish you nay have to use. 90cm should be ok throughout France based on my exp.

The vertical alignment of the dish was wrong. You can get an idea of what it should be on www.satelliteforcaravans.co.uk. I tend to get an idea from other dishes.

Or finally you were not accurate enough with your positioning of the dish to find the Satellite.

I have had many occasions when for no obvious reason i have failed to get a signal. I then move the dish and tripod and try again. Only once in Normandy for no obvious reason have i failed completly.

Andrew

 

[Litespeed]

The dish is a 166cm Omnisat so should be OK for France I use both a Compass and Sat finder. I set the vertical and skew from the supplied diagrams and charts for the area we are in prior to attempting to align the dish. Like I said that I have never had an issue in the UK...just the two sites I stayed at in France.

I also tried to move the tripod to another area etc.....still no joy. I said to my wife that I would try it when we get back to the UK and if no joy the @~#@?.,+n thing would end up on EBAY.....as usual back in the UK I managed to find a signal within a minute.

 

[Lutz]

By process of elimination it does sound as though you got reception from a satellite but from the wrong one. A 166cm dish is capable of picking up a lot of satellites. Perhaps you got the Eutelsat Eurobird 1 at 28.5

 

[stuart_5107319]

Sounds like you have the same kit as me ! Apparently the bigger the dish the more accurate you have to be in alignment. Takes me about 2 mins to lock on in the UK, was in Hockenhiem in Germany last month - took me about 20mins to find the correct satellite then an another 20 to get a decent signal out of it. Once found and locked I had no problems all week. Am off to Monza in North Italy next month - see how I get on there !!

 

[AndrewWimborne]

One more point to add to what i wrote about earlier. Did you turn off the complete system and pull the plug out before reconnecting and trying again

 

[Litespeed]

Would a digital compass help at all?

I find with a manual one as soon as I walk towards the dish (large and Metal) the compass is drawn to this and moves. Would a digital compass do the same? Surely a digital compass would be more accurate?

Thanks for the help so far

Simon (from Cornwall)

 

[Lutz]

Somehow, I doubt whether even a digital compass would be able to distinguish between the 28.5

 

[Litespeed]

One more point to add to what i wrote about earlier. Did you turn off the complete system and pull the plug out before reconnecting and trying again

Yes, tried that as well.

 

[Ken_5040834]

We use a Multimo 40cm dish and got a good signal about 20 miles north of Biarritz, although BBC and ITV disappeared around 6pm every evening.

We then went over the Spanish border, around 30 miles west of San Sebastian and still got the same - even when the BBC and ITV disappeared, we still got the sky satelite stations.

However, we then went over to Llanes and no signal at all.

 

[Icemaker]

we where in france two weeks ago and had absolutely no problems at all with astra 2 and we where using the maplins sattelight in a suitcase system with the dish suplied which is about 39 cm. i found the sattelight in about 5 minuites by trial and error no fancy gadgets needed. cant understand why anybody needs a bigger dish as from my days of installing sat systems on the side when sky first came on the scene it was widely accepted that the further north you went the larger the dish you needed not south as is being recommended here. a standard 60 cm dish was ok for london but lancashire required 120 cm dishes, relatives of mine who live near murcia in spain only have a 60 cm dish and its about 20 year old and still works fine. sounds to me simon you may have had something bloking the line of sight ?.

 

[Litespeed]

I think it must be me! It took me nearly 2 hours to get the thing lined up and working yesterday and thats at a site in Cornwall. The compass supplied seems very hit and miss, which doesnt help, so I might by myself a digital one.

There is no way I could ever get it aligned without the Sat Finder, although the high pitched noise it makes drives you (and fellow Campers) mad after 2 hours of searching.

I really do not know whether to percevere with it or just forget it all together. I find it the most stressful part of the whole caravan experience now, but I never want to be beaten by anything, so keep going!

If anybody has any tips or equipment or gadgets they use to help with alignment I would be interested to know.

Thanks

Simon (from Cornwall)

 

[rob_jax]

Hi,

Just a note on the different types of compass:

Obviously a normal compass is just a magnetised needle in a plastic box, and responds to the local magnetic field.

It's probably a good idea to set the direction away from any large lumps of metal (aerial, caravan, car) and use a long stick (or some other imaginative idea) to transfer the bearing onto the ground and run that back towards the caravan.

A digital compass uses a Hall-Effect transistor to sense the local magnetic field, so if the normal compass was affected by the presence of a large lump of metal - then so will the digital compass - and by exactly the same amount.

Robert

 

[BJ]

A problem could have been TREES. If ANYTHING obstructs the 'line of sight' between the satellite and your dish, you will not get a signal.

This can be difficult if you are on a pitch where you want shade from the south-east, yet want to set up your Sat dish.

 

[Litespeed]

Ive got to be honest I'm sure it's just me, I usually find after an 2 hours of mucking about trying to align the dish, it helps to drink half a bottle of red, kick the dish around your pitch for 10 minutes, then try again and lo and behold it works!!

 

[AndrewWimborne]

Hi. I experienced the same as you reported, good signal and quality but would not lock on. When I had this problem i emailed the chaop at the site we all use for our sat info. He told me I was either trying to log onto the wrong sat, or i had moved the dish too quickly. He advised me to turn off the system for a minute pulling the plug out and then start again.

Last weekend in Devon I had the same prob. Did what he said and started the search from the east of the sat. No prob, connected in seconds. Basically the dish had been logged onto the nearby sat. Problem solved.

 

[Lutz]

Seems to back up my theory that the receiver was locked on to the Eurobird instead of the Astra satellite, which are only 0.3

 

[JeremyClarksson]

Local magnetic fields can affect your compass reading, these can include local rock formations and as I found out at home sitting the compass on top of a motor drive.

If you want to get an accurate check for a south bearing use the position of the sun at noon (taking into account daylight saving time).

As all satellites rotate around the equator you would expect to need a larger one as you go north, but as someone said, satellites can be biassed to give better coverage in some areas If you go to the satellites web site it will give you the footprint and normal size of dish required - links from site below.

Most recievers will see Astra 2 and Eurobird as the same satellite indeed you will see that a lot of the channels you see using your Skybox are from Eurobird.

http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/United-Kingdom.html
My guess is that you are lining up on one of the other satellites i.e. Astra 1 or Hotbird,if this is the case pan east more until you get to it, you should find Astra 2 is probably the last you will get in our part of Europe using our sizes of dish.

Other common mistakes

Are you also sure that there were no obstacles in the way?

Connecting the sat finder the wrong way round (I have done this and it can confuse you for ages)

 

[Lutz]

Whereas I would agree that a regular 60cm or smaller diameter dish would see Eurobird and Astra 2 as the same satellite, Litespeed says that he (or she) is using a much larger, 166cm diameter one. As the beam aim sensitivity increases with dish size, maybe one of that diameter would very well distinguish between 0.3

 

[stuart_5107319]

Follow up from an earlier post - was in Italy last week, Monza, just North of Milan. Using an Omnisat 66cm dish - set up took about 2 minutes managed to get all channels, worked fantastic. Till I tripped over the cable after to much wine and had to set the bloody thing up again DOH!!

 

[JeremyClarksson]

Whereas I would agree that a regular 60cm or smaller diameter dish would see Eurobird and Astra 2 as the same satellite, Litespeed says that he (or she) is using a much larger, 166cm diameter one. As the beam aim sensitivity increases with dish size, maybe one of that diameter would very well distinguish between 0.3

 

[Litespeed]

Sorry Lutz,

I meant 66cm!

 

[Lutz]

I was beginning to wonder whether you were travelling around France as a sort of mobile Jodrell Bank.

 

[WatsonJohnG]

Icemaker you need a bigger dish as you get to the extremities of the signal footprint in every direction.

I could get Sky in Scotland on a 60 cm dish but I needed a bigger one in Barcelona and there I found that digi boxes also differ in ability to pull in a signal.

My friend with an identical dish could get ITV but I could not.We swapped leads over from the dish and he could still get ITV from my dish.The following year on the same pitches I was able to get ITV but needed a 0.3LNB

In the south of Spain you can get Sky if you re-tune to the south beam of Astra.

I spent a long time one year in Sarzeau Brittany because I tilted the dish downwards instead of upwards (memory failed !)

I have now got the excellent Omnimax Semitronic dish on the caravan roof but could not get anything at all in Leek (Blackshaw Moor) because there were trees and a hillside just blocking the signal.Even using the back up dish and tripod failed to pull in the signal so we had to use the piped site TV !!!

We can see Jodrell Bank from the bedroom window.

There was a joke going round at the time of construction along the lines of :

They couldn't get ethnic (PC) builders to work on the site because they didn't fancy loading the cement mixer !!