Another G10R Question...Plus PBS PIDS?

[radiobob]

Alrighty, friends and neighbors...

I installed the 90cm Fortec dish today; I'm happy to report that it arrived unbent and removal of the Winegard and installation and alignment of the Fortec took less than an hour.

A bigger (and properly formed) dish makes a world of difference; I'm actually able to get channels that previously eluded me (like Ohio News on SBS6/74° and ABC News on IA8/89°--hey, I finally get my "true south" satellite!!). Signals that were strong before are preposterously strong, and those that were marginal are full quality...

except...

the elusive Equity multiplex on G10R/123° 11720 V. Before I changed the dish, I used to, at least on occasion (like during high tide and when the planets were properly aligned), get reception on the 11720 channels. Now, everything else on G10R is coming in gangbusters, but I get nada on 11720. I know this is a problem-child of a transponder, but I can get virtually every other FTA channel across the arc, save those (and, I've done the usual push down, pull up tests to verify alignment). Are their data settings still 27692 - 3/4?

Also...

I finally get the PBS channels on AMC3/87°, but without audio (Montana PBS is fine). Is this just an incorrect PID setting issue?

So, at long last, the sat receiver is in the living room, hooked up to the big TV, and where am I? In the office, typing to you guys!

Go figure...

[brentb636]

The pbs audio that you "can't get" is AC-3 audio and probably is traveling down your "S/PDIF " fiber port ( if you have one ) and will have to go to a decoder ( maybe on a home theater box ? ) .

If you're using USALS mode to position your dish, try Disecq mode for G10R . I did that , nudged the dish a hair to the west , and optimized my 11720V signal. It's still a weak sister, but on good days, I get it fine. Wish I'd had enough experience to get a 90 CM dish to start with, now it's on my christmas list . Good luck to you, glad to see some success.

[boroda1]

Hi, Radiobob!
I am using USALS on all sats, for G10R I just cheated the motor, setting it's position to 123.2 instead of 123.
I agree with brentb that 11720 tp signal varies from time to time: once in June, it was strong for a week.
{Second edit} Let's wait for the winter! Maybe, it's going to be stronger

[Iceberg]

the reason 11720 is low is because right next door is 11724 V on Dish 121 which is overpowering it. If you had a dish like the cable companies use (15 feet or larger) you wouldn't notice a difference. But because we have smaller dishes, the Dish121 signal interferes with G10.

We had a couple weeks when it was BOOMING and that was because Dish had turned off the 11724 TP

and yes Dish has a TP on 11800 too but its opposite polarity so there's no issues. Over at satelliteguys, we had Gary (the guy who hosts that crazy "unreliable sources" late Friday night) explain that the power they put out on both TP's was the same and it was the cross pole of our dishes.

In lehmans terms, need a bigger dish

I went to a 90cm Fortec and get 40-48 on that TP on my Pansat 1500. 11800 is at 75 or so

[wejones]

Originally Posted by radiobob

Also...

I finally get the PBS channels on AMC3/87°, but without audio (Montana PBS is fine). Is this just an incorrect PID setting issue?

As Brent said, this is because it is AC3, and some receivers pass this through the digital audio outputs, but some don't. I see in the specs of your receiver that you DO have an optical digital output. I'm curious whether in fact the Viewsat thing actually passes the AC3. My Fortec Lifetime had a digital output, but initially didn't pass AC3, but after a firmware upgrade, it did.
When you scan in those channels, does it list a PID for the audio? I think that before the firmware upgrade, my Lifetime just put in zero for the audio PID, but after the upgrade, it recognized the AC3 PID, and listed it. So I think if you have an audio PID listed, there is a good chance that you're passing AC3 through the digital output.

[boroda1]

Thanks, Ice! It would be interesting to know, what exactly this interference is?
I understand, that it's all digital now, and it's not possible to have an effect like two radiostations on one band.
Does Dish signal suffer the same way from G10R 11720?
Probably not...

[radiobob]

Originally Posted by wejones

I'm curious whether in fact the Viewsat thing actually passes the AC3.

Bill:

Well, of course my "home theater" (har! har! ) amplifier is just a little too old to have digital ins, but I can always steal my Behringer monitors out of my production studio (they have both digital and analog ins) and give that a try. I'll let you know.

Meanwhile, thanks all!

P.S. As for "getting a bigger dish"...I think I'm through spending on FTA stuff for a couple of weeks...but...BUT...a friend of mine has a couple of 4 ft. fiberglass dishes his company used to use; they've abandoned their RF telemetry links in favor of land-line IP stuff, so... maybe I'll put one of 'em up as a fixed dish and try to pull out that darned Equity mux.

[elgemcdlf]

Originally Posted by Iceberg

In lehmans terms, need a bigger dish

I disagree. I have a 8.5' mesh that is Ku capable and brings in killer signal strength/quality on most everything except the ever elusive 11720. I can get the mux consistant and reasonably strong. Good quality picture without breakup on both my 76cm dish and the 8.5' but there really is no difference between the two when looking at the quality meter on the receiver.

I have found it to be simple matter of alignment.

[Iceberg]

Originally Posted by boroda1

Does Dish signal suffer the same way from G10R 11720?
Probably not...

nope. They seem to have the stronger signal for some reason

[wejones]

Originally Posted by Iceberg

the reason 11720 is low is because right next door is 11724 V on Dish 121 which is overpowering it. If you had a dish like the cable companies use (15 feet or larger) you wouldn't notice a difference. But because we have smaller dishes, the Dish121 signal interferes with G10.
....

I know that it's 90% likely that the nearby Echo sat is responsible, but I'm not completely convinced that the 11720 problems are due to the 11724 signal next door. First of all, when I run a spectrum scan of G-10, it does show that the 11720 peak is not quite as strong as the other peaks on the sat, although it is definately strong enough that it shouldn't give the reception problems that people report.
But a few months ago, there was a discussion in another forum about this, and some were suggesting that it was due to the drift of the sats, bringing G10 and Echo9 closer together ( I didn't beleive this, however people's problems seemed to clear up when the 2 sats were brought back to their 2 deg spacing, so I don't know about that...) . However, to investigate, while tuned to 11720, I bumped my dish a bit to the west (still receiving G-10 on C-band), expecting to see the reception improve from getting it further from Echo9, if the problem was due to 11724. If I remember correctly, this didn't happen, so I started to suspect that maybe people were having polarity problems. I reversed polarity, and did a blind scan. The blind scan picked up a strong signal at 11720/26800 ! At first I thought that I had discovered a new signal on the sat, but I decided to check nearby sats. What I found was that this signal was actually on G-13, ie 4 degrees away from where I was aimed!
As it turns out, my dish ie pretty bad with respect to side lobes, and apparently one of the side lobes is apparently approximately 4 degrees out.
Now, I know this still seems a bit illogical, but I think it is possible that interferrence from G13 is actually involved here. First, the SR on the G13 sat is much closer to the SR of the 11720/27692 on G10, plus the freq is right on. I know that the G13 signal is of the wrong polarity, however, I think that is is possible that polarity might be rotated somewhat for side-lobes (I have no evidence for this, but I think it is possible), plus it doesn't take being off much in polarity before you start getting significant amounts of signal, ie the polarity null is quite sharp compared to being off peak.
Now I have no idea of whether side lobes are a function of dish size or are more a function of frequency, so I don't know if side lobes on a 3' dish would be spaced the same as those on my 10' dish. I know that people don't complain about side lobes on small dishes, but I think that may be because the resolution is so poor that they kind of blend into the shape of the main lobe.
Another aspect is, why do I see this 11720 signal slightly lower in my spectrum scans. I wonder if they are voluntarily reducing the signal strength to help avoid interferrence with the Dishnet superdish people, who have less resolution than the FTA'ers.
Anyway, the odds are, that you are right, and it's due to the 11724, however I think there are other possible explanations, and I'm not quite sure how to tell what is causing the problems.