A little help needed

[Juicytree]

As I am working away from home for 3 months and wishing to use my sky subscription, for a temporary installation I purchased a 40cm caravan dish (the one with the windscreen sucker) including LNB & Satfinder meter. Taking my info from dishpointer.com and neighbouring installations I am damned if I can locate the D1 bird.

The meter is working OK with the H/V led showing red, the 22KHz off and the audio tone & needle working. I have the dish on a horizontal surface, however it doesn't have any elevation graduations marked on it.
I have changed my decoder from my home dual lnb (10750 & 11800) to this single lnb of 11300 and 11800.

Any tips or advice would be gratefully received. Just goes to show I should have got a professional installation - doesn't pay to go cheap. I thought it is supposed to be easy!!:confused:

[MrElectricity]

Hi mate that is a big ask to get D1 on a 40cm dish it's not the strongest signal to find in the sky. Do you have a compass? I'm sure you know to point it 160deg if not get it roughly north facing slightly up and small movements resting a minuet or so between each movement to give your meter a chance. Once you get the best signal on the meter don't forget you may have to twist the LNB to get signal quality once again only a little at a time.

[Juicytree]

Thanks Mr E. If I could only get the needle to so much as quiver, I'd be very happy. Remind me not to go caravaning and setting this thing up every night!!
That dishpointer.com is a great site and from what I can assess it is fairly accurate.

[kiwisteve]

It will probably work with that size dish but you wont have much rain fade margin on those very wet days

[krs]

Is it a Zinwell brand LNB? If it's the one I'm thinking of that usually comes with these dishes then it's a universal type. The 22khz tone will need to be set to on to make the lnb use the upper part of it's L band. >10600 LO. I know the sky decoders have a 22khz setting that can be switched in the setup menu (if you know your pin#!) but if it will work with a universal LNB and sky's c1/22khz backup option I don't know.
Maybe an experienced sky installer might be able to post about this.
Also had one guy come in to work with one of these dishes that couldn't get any signal like yourself. End result - the LNB was faulty.

[kiwisteve]

Perhaps you could try a freeview box , either official or otherwise
and see if that works with various combos of LO frequency and 22khz tone

[Juicytree]

Thanks guys. I think krs is right - It's a Zinwell and requires the tone on for 10600. I have access to a Satmax box so will have a go at driving it with the 22 khz on and see how that goes as I can't find the switch in my small sky pace box menu. Will keep you posted. Thanks a lot.

BTW rain fade! Not this year in the south island east coast!!

[MrElectricity]

The 22Hz is a set up program option internally not a physical switch, but you need to know the pin number to get into the set up menu.

[Injuised]

You need to point it to compass bearing 318 degrees roughly depending where you are in NZ. Hook it all up before you power up the decoder and krs is right you can set the sky box to 22 Khz and set lo to 10600. Make sure there are no trees or buildings above 40 degree incline. and just keep trying.
But in my opinion get rid of that flimsy suction cup with no measurements for elevation a little bit of movement will throw it off and with a dish that small in rainy weather you lose your pix anyway.
Suggest a 54 cm with a decent mount and reliable sharp lnb preferably 10750 to match your sky dish. hope this helps and good luck, no one said it was easy

[Injuised]

In the Sky box it is not called 22khz , go into satellite switching and use the west flag which is 22 khz

[LennonNZ]

Can a Sky box use diseqc?

[cyril]

Technically there is no reason why it could not, its just a common STi Omega based DVB box, however the firmware that Sky run on it does not allow diseqc control.

Cyril

[Injuised]

Can a Sky box use diseqc?

Why would you want diseqc on a sky box ????
you cant tune any other birds into it

[LennonNZ]

1 Toroidal Dish. Multi input/Output Switch. controlled via Diseqc. Sky Decoder attacked to 1 output and Other STB plugged into another output. Get the Idea.

[openmedia]

If you have Optus D1 H on the first port of your switch then the Sky STB should work.

[Juicytree]

Update. I approached the techs in the local sky office and was told that the decoder couldn't generate a tone the way they are configured. After pulling a long suffering act to a very sympathetic tech he gave me a second hand lnb tuned at 11300.

That fixed the problem and everything started working with no problems.
Lesson: Don't try to get a signal into a pace sky box using a Zinwell lnb lo=10600 requiring a 22khz tone

[Injuised]

Update. I approached the techs in the local sky office and was told that the decoder couldn't generate a tone the way they are configured. After pulling a long suffering act to a very sympathetic tech he gave me a second hand lnb tuned at 11300.

That fixed the problem and everything started working with no problems.
Lesson: Don't try to get a signal into a pace sky box using a Zinwell lnb lo=10600 requiring a 22khz tone

Sky technicians only know what Sky want them to know,
Sky dont like their techs gettin to clever

there is a 22khz switch in the dual Lnb, thats how they switch to the second throat, and have the C1 test

I have a sky dual LNB with broadband coming of C1 switched by sending 22khz up the spout, and freeview of D1

[Injuised]

1 Toroidal Dish. Multi input/Output Switch. controlled via Diseqc. Sky Decoder attacked to 1 output and Other STB plugged into another output. Get the Idea.

Gotcha

Nice..

Thats gonna confuse the f out of a sky tech