Dish alignment for Sky Q

[Padawan]

Hi, I'm looking at realigning a dish on a commercial property and am aware that there are many transponders on Astra 2E, the question is what ones would people suggest I use to align the dish.  I'm aware that sky use 11.778v for their signal strength but have also been led to believe that this is the EPG for Sky and 1 of the strongest of the transponders.  I hope there is some helpmiut there and look forward to your responses.

[Padawan]

@Godfrey 

[nigea99]

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@Padawan wrote:

Hi, I'm looking at realigning a dish on a commercial property and am aware that there are many transponders on Astra 2E, the question is what ones would people suggest I use to align the dish.  I'm aware that sky use 11.778v for their signal strength but have also been led to believe that this is the EPG for Sky and 1 of the strongest of the transponders.  I hope there is some helpmiut there and look forward to your responses.

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As you have already tagged @Godfrey I am sure he will advise accordingly. 

I am sure that the best advice is to check the strength on all transponders which I think the SKY test meters give

We do know that the transponder used by CNN & GB News is one of the weakest as it is on a European widebeam but optimising for that, I guess, could result in other UK targetted beams not being optimal 

[Godfrey]

@Padawan  The 3 satellites are located in a cluster within around 0.3 degrees of each other.

So, as your test meter is unlikely to be able to measure a signal strength difference less than around 0.1 dB, I have never found it necessary to optimise my dish beam for any particular transponder.  I of course always scan across all of the satellite transponders that Sky are using, and expect to easily exceed the minimum required Modulation Error Ratio (MER) quality of around 11 dB on every transponder, with the highest quality transponders achieving around 20 dB.

A typical 1 metre dish transponder scan from 2024, using a Televes H30 meter.

Godfrey. 

[Padawan]

Thanks for that, would I expect to see all the transponders on both the V & H outlets?  My meter will only allow 1 input and is probably not as good as yours (unfortunately).

 

[Padawan]

I am now unsure if my meter will do wideband, could anyone recommend any units for me please?

[Godfrey]

@Padawan  The Televes H30 ASHA version would provide a guided dish installation, with the benefit of being able to quickly update the list of scanned transponders to match the latest version being used by Sky engineers. A full transponder scan would then take around 3 minutes to clearly show the status of every required transponder.

It works with either Legacy Universal LNBs or Wideband LNBs.

Godfrey.

[Padawan]

Managed to get use of a labgear 701 meter and am getting readings of approx 90% power (dBm) on both horizontal and vertical transponders with ch noise at approx 80% on horizontal transponders and 100% on vertical transponders.  MER is between between 12.5 & 15db.  I have taken the measurements again at the point where they plug into the multi switch and the power dips off by 9 - 15%.  All is working fine apart from Sky Sports Main Event which is pixelating on fast moving images & graphics....please help as I'm confused.

[Godfrey]

@Padawan  Looking at the manual for your test meter it should be able to display these parameters;

So, if you can select transponder V26, which is used for the UHD version of Sky Sports Main Event

12.207 GHz  DVB-S2  8PSK  27500  2/3  Vertical, then take photographs of the results when you measure this transponder signal at one of the multiswitch output ports, it might provide a starting point for analysis of your problem.

As an example this is an image of the constellation quality presently emerging from my personal multiswitch for Tp 26V which is being transmitted via the Europe Wide beam and therefore around 3dB lower received power than transponders being transmitted via the tightly focussed UK beam.

Godfrey.