Looking for a favour really

We have just replaced our old sky dish (quad lnb) on the side of the house with a 60cm dish and octo lnb non sky setup.

No matter how hard we try we cannot seem to get it right, and end up with some but not all the channels. A small tweak and we get other channels but the first ones start to break up.

The dish we have, as well as the usual up/down and left/right settings also needs the lnb focused and also the skew of the lnb to be set. We installed the original sky dish ourselves and managed it with ease, but all these addidional settings are causing us major headaches.

The current situation is that most channels kind of work ok, we cannot get AL Jazeera or Russia today, possible more at all on the Humax box although most other channels have reasonable SQ and Strength. On sky Luxe HD is breaking up big time. and also on the Sky HD box, the signal status on input 1 looks good but due to the issue below input 2 is all over the place.

Along with this whilst using the signal meter for the umpteenth time we seem to have damaged one of the feeds that runs to my sky HD box and now the signal on input 2 is all over the place. If I reach out of the window and tap the connection then it gets better for a while before going to pot. There is plenty of cable in the loft so it needs the ends of both feeds pulling off and redoing (twin coax cable).

We have 4 feeds running off the dish, 2 to the sky hd box, 1 to a Humax freesat box, and 1 to my panasonic TH42-PZ81 freesat TV.

Anyone in herts with the right equipment willing to help us out and get the thing working properly. Both the alignment, focus and skew of the LNB and the dual coax need sorting. My brother has spent hours up the ladder and got no where really, I suffer from vertigo and cannot get up high enough to reach the dish which is mounted between both upstairs windows.

i think you can get a satellite finder rather than a signal strenght meter to do the job, its what the guy used to do mine....i think maplin has them:)

K:)

B&Q as well. Bout £10 IIRC and those ones had a strength and lock LED.

i think you can get a satellite finder rather than a signal strenght meter to do the job, its what the guy used to do mine....i think maplin has them:)

K:)

Saw them in Currys not so long ago ,and THINK also PC world .

Apart from the dish alignment, could it not be a dodgy LNB ?

The feed of Eurobird 2 is pretty strong so a 60cm dish, if of decent quality, should be miles stronger than a perforated sky minidish, hence why I wonder if it's not necessarily an alignment problem but a hardware defect with the LNB.

Do you still have the Sky LNB and if it also has a collar mount? you could give it a go.

Also worth checking the quality of your F connector connection onto the LNB. Could water have gone in and shorted it?

Apart from the dish alignment, could it not be a dodgy LNB ?

The feed of Eurobird 2 is pretty strong so a 60cm dish, if of decent quality, should be miles stronger than a perforated sky minidish, hence why I wonder if it's not necessarily an alignment problem but a hardware defect with the LNB.

Do you still have the Sky LNB and if it also has a collar mount? you could give it a go.

Also worth checking the quality of your F connector connection onto the LNB. Could water have gone in and shorted it?

That would be my suggestion, that or the dish isn't a good one, or it needs mounting higher to give it a better line of sight, use the gold braded cable, silver stuff isn't very good, hope you get it sorted.

The dish is a triax one,

I have a theory and another LNB on order, will try that next weekend. Last weekend after 3 hrs of fiddling we couldnt get it any better.

Right, time for an update.

Changed the LNB today for a sky octo lnb in place of the more expensive non sky LNB. Spent ages again, and despite being able to get a good signal on some channels, other channels just wouldnt work. This was with the sky HD box and my TH42-PZ81 freesat TV. For example on freesat Russia today wouldnt tune in. On my Sky HD box things were much worse, with about 2/3 of the channels displaying "no sat signal" this was despite having good signal strength in the sky meny.

Next Step,

Took down the 60cm dish, and examined it closely and noted that the dish maybe slightly distorted, possibly a small dent. So replaced it with the original small one continuing to use the octo LNB. Got a good signal again, on freesat Russia today now works and no picture breakup on any channel. TV signal meter says all is good, sky signal meter says signal is good. Still loads of channels not working on sky. So, freesat now works completely.

Checked all the cables to the sky box and they are all fine with good signal according to the sat meter at the sky box end. Next step, disassemble the Sky HD. Having read all the issues with thomson power supplies decided to checkout mine. Yes, you guessed it several of the PSU capacitors have raised tops and are therefore blown. Now making a list of the capacitors and my dads going to pop into Maplins on Monday to get replacements for all the capacitors. Should be able to get all of them for a fraction of the cost of buying from Satcure.

Hopefully once my dad has repaired the psu I'll have a full working Sky HD box again.