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John Legon wrote:
Andy Burns wrote:
My dish is a 60cm 'standard' one, I was going to put a multi-LNB arm on
it straight away, then I had some problems with linux drivers for the
TBS DVB-S2 card (never trust promises that proprietary drivers will be
open sourced, managed to hack it past one kernel uprade then lost
patience) now happily running with a different card on stock kernel,
mythtv happy with HD (had to dedicate a couple of disks to it to get
sufficient throughput) ... now looking to add the 2nd LNB and disqec
switch for 19.2 ... anything else worth a 3rd LNB while I'm at it?

The usual choice for the third LNB on a 60cm dish is Hotbird at 13 E.
Well over 500 FTA channels, many Italian, but otherwise a very diverse
selection. I don't know how many of those you would want to watch, but
with LNBs costing only a fiver, it works out at a penny per channel.

I would advise getting a four-way DiSEqC switch, just in case.

Good radio stations as well. Swiss Classic etc.

Bill

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On Tuesday, November 29th, 2011 at 04:00:51h +0000, John Legon explained:

The usual choice for the third LNB on a 60cm dish is Hotbird at 13 E.
Well over 500 FTA channels, many Italian,

And lots of FTA Arabic stations as well.

Also IRIB 1 and 2 with English sub-titles.

Good for Nile News (in English) for the latest developments in Egypt.

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John Legon wrote:

Andy wrote:

My dish is a 60cm 'standard' one,
now looking to add the 2nd LNB and disqec
switch for 19.2 ... anything else worth a 3rd LNB while I'm at it?

The usual choice for the third LNB on a 60cm dish is Hotbird at 13 E.

Obviously my only LNB at the moment is pointed at 28.2E, when adding
more LNBs it it usual to leave the primary LNB on the centre axis of the
dish and have the other LNBs off to the side(s), or to re-target the
dish so it's aimed somewhere central to the required sweep and adjust
all LNBs to suit that?

I can see the compromises involved, but don't know what would normally
be required to get acceptable signal on the new LNBs without affecting
th existing one too much.

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At 13:35:08 Wed, 30 Nov 2011, Andy Burns wrote:
John Legon wrote:

Andy wrote:

My dish is a 60cm 'standard' one,
now looking to add the 2nd LNB and disqec
switch for 19.2 ... anything else worth a 3rd LNB while I'm at it?

The usual choice for the third LNB on a 60cm dish is Hotbird at 13 E.

Obviously my only LNB at the moment is pointed at 28.2E, when adding
more LNBs it it usual to leave the primary LNB on the centre axis of the
dish and have the other LNBs off to the side(s), or to re-target the
dish so it's aimed somewhere central to the required sweep and adjust
all LNBs to suit that?

This will depend on the number of LNBs. If you just want to add 19.2 E
then I would leave the dish aligned to 28.2 E with the present LNB at
the prime focus, and put the 19.2 E LNB on one side - down a bit and a
few cm to the right.

But if you want to include (say) 13.0 E, then I would definitely use the
LNB in the primary position for 19.2 E, and re-align the dish to that
satellite. The LNBs for 28.2 E and 13.0 E will then be mounted on the
left and right sides of the central position, and adjusted for maximum
signal without moving the dish away from 19.2 E.

This didn't apply to my triple-LNB set-up, because the LNB boom arm as
assembled was not square to the dish, and the LNB closest to the primary
position is actually mounted on the bracket I made myself...


I can see the compromises involved, but don't know what would normally
be required to get acceptable signal on the new LNBs without affecting
th existing one too much.

In practice you should find that an LNB a few degrees away from the axis
will provide nearly as much signal as the primary LNB, provided that the
position can optimised both horizontally and vertically. The closer a
satellite is to due south, the greater the elevation, so the reflection
off the dish will be lower for 13 E and higher for 28 E, relative to a
primary LNB and dish aligned to 19 E.

--
John L

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John Legon wrote:

If you just want to add 19.2 E
then I would leave the dish aligned to 28.2 E with the present LNB at
the prime focus, and put the 19.2 E LNB on one side

But if you want to include (say) 13.0 E, then I would definitely use the
LNB in the primary position for 19.2 E, and re-align the dish to that
satellite. The LNBs for 28.2 E and 13.0 E will then be mounted on the
left and right sides of the central position

Originally I was going to buy a triax TD dish (thinking that would make
getting multi-LNB holders later straightforward) but I ended up with a
generic dish, so I need a generic extension arm.

I suppose the type of arm that attaches via a collar round the 'prime'
LNB would be better suited for the left+right LNB setup ...

In practice you should find that an LNB a few degrees away from the axis
will provide nearly as much signal as the primary LNB, provided that the
position can optimised both horizontally and vertically.

I forsee lots of fiddling about with screwdrivers and spanners while
juggling a laptop to using femon and scandvb over WiFi on the mythbackend!!

Hmm, do I risk the elements now, or wait for March?

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On Wednesday, November 30th, 2011, at 18:21:09h +0000, Andy Burns wrote:

Hmm, do I risk the elements now, or wait for March?

It can be very windy in March, which obviously is not a
good time to be adjusting satellite dishes and LNBs.

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Andy Burns wrote:
Originally I was going to buy a triax TD dish (thinking that would make
getting multi-LNB holders later straightforward) but I ended up with a
generic dish, so I need a generic extension arm.

I suppose the type of arm that attaches via a collar round the 'prime'
LNB would be better suited for the left+right LNB setup ...

Hard to say. I looked for something suitable "off the shelf" but ended
up making my own fittings.


In practice you should find that an LNB a few degrees away from the axis
will provide nearly as much signal as the primary LNB, provided that the
position can optimised both horizontally and vertically.

I forsee lots of fiddling about with screwdrivers and spanners while
juggling a laptop to using femon and scandvb over WiFi on the mythbackend!!

Hmm, do I risk the elements now, or wait for March?

Whatever you do, don't attempt to align the dish when it's like this:

http://www.john-legon.co.uk/temp/icicles.jpg

That was about this time last year, IIRC.

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On Mon, 28 Nov 2011 03:02:29 -0800 (PST), larkim
wrote:

Answering my own Q - is this what I would need to manually flick
between two different LNBs / dishes?

http://www.multimediasystems.co.uk/a...html#aABSWITCH

That's exactly what you need. I bought that same one years ago and it
gave good service switching over an LNB between a Sky box and a PC sat
card, until I installed a quad-LNB, when the switch was no longer
needed.

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wrote in message
...
On Mon, 28 Nov 2011 03:02:29 -0800 (PST), larkim
wrote:

Answering my own Q - is this what I would need to manually flick
between two different LNBs / dishes?

http://www.multimediasystems.co.uk/a...html#aABSWITCH

That's exactly what you need. I bought that same one years ago and it
gave good service switching over an LNB between a Sky box and a PC sat
card, until I installed a quad-LNB, when the switch was no longer
needed.


I appreciate that it's a slightly different setup from what the original
poster had in mind, but this is how I added a Triax multi LNB kit to a
standard 60 cm dish, works very well with my Technomate HD receiver and
before anyone points it out, no I haven't got around to replacing the self
amalgam tape on one of the LNBs, although the good quality F connectors are
pretty waterproof anyway.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11815200/dis...%201199%29.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11815200/dis...x%20808%29.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11815200/dis...x%20810%29.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11815200/dis...x%20810%29.jpg

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At 14:35:06 Thu, 8 Dec 2011, Rick wrote:

I appreciate that it's a slightly different setup from what the original
poster had in mind, but this is how I added a Triax multi LNB kit to a
standard 60 cm dish, works very well with my Technomate HD receiver and
before anyone points it out, no I haven't got around to replacing the self
amalgam tape on one of the LNBs, although the good quality F connectors are
pretty waterproof anyway.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11815200/dis...%201199%29.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11815200/dis...x%20808%29.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11815200/dis...x%20810%29.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11815200/dis...x%20810%29.jpg

It's good to see other people taking the multi-LNB approach, but it
raises the question, what to do with the spare port on your four-way
DiSEqC switch?

Even if it were possible to squeeze a fourth LNB onto a 60 cm dish
(and get a signal), there's no very obvious choice of fourth satellite,
so I connected my fourth port to a spare dish which I could point to any
satellite that looked interesting. This started my interest in 3D TV,
after finding FTA channels at 23.5 E and 9 E. (Two more have since
started at 30 W, plus Sky and Astra 3D at 19.2 E.)

However, I made the mistake of mounting the dish on a vertical pole,
which meant that when I moved the dish from one satellite to another,
both azimuth and elevation had to be adjusted.

It would have been much better - having now seen how a motorised dish
works - to have tilted the pole, so that the rotation of the dish
tracked the geo-stationary orbit. The satellite positions would then
have been marked off on an index scale, making it easy to go from one
fourth satellite to another. A good system for a ground-based spare
dish in fine weather :)

--
John Legon