Sky satellite tech info? please help...

[tvout]

Wahey - I've got a USB satellite TV device now that seems to work. Thing is, I have a Sky dish and it just gives me a huge list of satellites to select from...

Can someone tell me which would be Sky? Or is there another satellite that my Sky dish might pick up or would I totally need to re-orientate or even replace the dish?

I tried a few and it said the signal was about 6%...

Astra 2 28.2E, or Eurobird 28.5E, both are close enough to be picked up on the same dish.

[tvout]

Originally Posted by Losttheplot

Astra 2 28.2E, or Eurobird 28.5E, both are close enough to be picked up on the same dish.

Many thanks Losttheplot, I've added those two satellites. Do all Sky dishes point that direction? Mine seems to point about 140SE?

I think there might be other settings I need to change as it says it cannot get a lock on those two when I test it.

It has a box saying 'Transponders' which is a long list starting 11307-V-27500? Would I need to select one of those?

Originally Posted by tvout

Many thanks Losttheplot, I've added those two satellites. Do all Sky dishes point that direction? Mine seems to point about 140SE?

I think there might be other settings I need to change as it says it cannot get a lock on those two when I test it.

It has a box saying 'Transponders' which is a long list starting 11307-V-27500? Would I need to select one of those?

The 28.2E or 28.5E direction would be the direction you would point your dish if you were at the centre of the earth. As you aren't at the centre, the direction is not directly related to a specific compass heading.

Sky use a single dish to see all of the satellites located at 28.2e and 28.5e, they are close enough to be received by a single dish.
As well as pointing at the right satellite you also need to make sure the signalling to your LNB is correct. Sky use a universal LNB which has two local oscillator frequencies, and two polarities. Selecting the polarities is done by sending 13Volts to the LNB for Vertically polarised signals, 18Volts for horizontal. The high and low band signals are selected by using the two local oscillator frequencies in the LNB, a 22kHz tone is used to select the high band oscillator.

[Kymmy]

28.2E is actually how many degrees the sat is from 0 degrees longitude (i.e. The Greenwich line), as all sattelites in geo-stationary orbit are roughtly over the equator it means that if a sat was at 0 degrees your dish would point straight down (south) where as if the sat was east of the line your dish turns left (towards east) and if your sat of west of the line your dish turns right (west), also remember that because the earth is curved your dish also has to point slightly lower the further east or west it goes (higher for those in the southern hemisphere). There are limits based on line of site and also where the antennas on the sat are pointing themselves..

Kymmy

[altis]

Your list of transponders may well be out of date. If you can, get the thing to do a scan for transponders and see how many unencrypted channels it can pick up. Failing that, type this lot in!!!

http://www.lyngsat.com/28east.html

Be warned, channels come and go and move about quite often. You'll have to do a channel scan quite often to keep up to date. This is handled automatically by the EPG from Sky or Freesat.

---------- Post added at 09:54 ---------- Previous post was at 09:45 ----------

This is how all the satellites look from, I think, Strasburg:



To calculate your own angles try this:

http://www.golombek.com/sat/

More info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit