My receiver getting several satellites by pointing to 148

stockgurubear · #1 (**permalink**) 07-29-2005, 12:11 PM

House came with dishnet 148 dish installed on house. Hooked up Fortec Lifetime Ultra and bam! all of a sudden after scanning for satellites, I am getting 148,119, and IA6. Not sure how they are all coming from this dish, but I've got em. Any advice would be appreciated

stockgurubear · #2 (**permalink**) 07-29-2005, 06:04 PM

ok, so I think it may all be the same channels. I guess the frequency is the same so it may be loading the channels on every "satellite" that I think I am getting. Can anyone confirm that this may be it?

kevision · #3 (**permalink**) 07-29-2005, 07:08 PM

what channels are you getting?

stockgurubear · #4 (**permalink**) 07-29-2005, 07:56 PM

Well, I get all blocked Dishnet channels on each satellite. 148 doesn't have FTA channels. I keep getting repeat channels on all the satellites, which is why I was wondering if it is picking up the same channels from the one satellite.

kevision · #5 (**permalink**) 07-29-2005, 10:29 PM

It is difficult to understand your situation. If you are getting blocked channels from 148, that makes sense. What programming are you seeing that leads you to believe you are seeing something on IA6?

wejones · #6 (**permalink**) 07-30-2005, 08:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stockgurubear

ok, so I think it may all be the same channels. I guess the frequency is the same so it may be loading the channels on every "satellite" that I think I am getting. Can anyone confirm that this may be it?

Assuming that you don't have a motorized dish, the Fortec receiver doesn't really know what satellite it is looking at, and when you select another satellite, it just finds the same channels, thinking you are on a different satellite. Since the Ultra does a blind search, it doesn't really care what the actual downlink freqs are either, it just finds whatever is coming down from the lnb, which will be the same every time, no matter what satellite you tell it that it is looking at. You could tell it that you were receiving from the space shuttle, and it would still give you the same channels. Until you re-aim your dish, that is.

stockgurubear · #7 (**permalink**) 07-30-2005, 10:58 AM

Thanks for the info. I just thought it was strange because each time I went to a new satelite and searched for "ALL" channels, I would get a different set of channels that are found. They would be the same channels, but on IA6 for example, I would get a bunch of blocked locals from the US. On IA5, I got a bunch of blocked dish channels but it showed HBOW, MOMAX, PPV, etc. I figured that it was picking up the same 148 signal but I couldn't understand why the channel set kept coming differently. I guess 148 doesn't have any FTA channels on it?

pmb1010 · #8 (**permalink**) 07-30-2005, 11:18 AM

Each satellite is pre-programmed in the receiver.

Think of it this way:

In Toledo there are a known set of FM radio stations.
In Pittsburg they have their own set of FM stations.

Some might be on the same frequency, many are not.

You have a radio in your car. It has in it, pre programmed frequencies for each city. It can scan thru them and find active stations.

You are in Toledo, scan, and get all the correct stations.

You drive to Pittsburg, but you dont change from Toledo. You scan, find a few overlap stations, but seem to miss many of them.

This is what you are doing by scanning each different satellite, but not moving the dish to compensate.

You wont get anything of any real content using 18" dish. You really need to get a 30-36" and correct LNB for FTA in order to get programming.

wejones · #9 (**permalink**) 07-30-2005, 11:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stockgurubear

Thanks for the info. I just thought it was strange because each time I went to a new satelite and searched for "ALL" channels, I would get a different set of channels that are found. They would be the same channels, but on IA6 for example, I would get a bunch of blocked locals from the US. On IA5, I got a bunch of blocked dish channels but it showed HBOW, MOMAX, PPV, etc. I figured that it was picking up the same 148 signal but I couldn't understand why the channel set kept coming differently. I guess 148 doesn't have any FTA channels on it?

What kind of scan are you doing, ie a satellite scan, a transponder scan, or the power scan or whatever they call it? I'll assume you were doing a power scan, otherwise I don't have a clue about the IA5/IA6 part of it, and I'm not sure I have a clue anyway. But there are also options for whether to search high SR values or low SR values or both. I've found that if I searched in the "both" mode, or whatever they call it, that it sometimes misses channels, and it might be that on one try it gets some, but not others..... NO, not likely at all, but you might trying the search in the high SR mode since all the transponders on that sat are high. Also, are you searching both polarities, or just one?
I'm kind of out of ideas, unless the Dish that you have happens to be one of those things with 2 lnbs that look at more than one satellite. If it is, I can imagine that it is possible for some strange things to happen if it randomly switches from sat to sat, because I don't think the Ultra can really control the switching properly on those things.
At first I thought that perhaps you were doing a satellite scan, which uses the freq/sr values in the receiver's memory, and that some of those freq/sr values for IA5/IA6 just happened to be the same as the transponders on the Echo sat, but looking at Lyngsat, I don't see any likely culprits for transponders that would give the results you describe.
Anyway, I am confused at why you are getting different results with different scans, unless there is some uncontrolled switching going on within the Dishnet lnbf.

stockgurubear · #10 (**permalink**) 07-30-2005, 06:13 PM

I know the receiver had the Power scan function. What I was doing was the initial setup where you can choose the satellite you want, change the TP and whether it is 22khz or Diseq, etc. I would see the Power Level go up and then go ahead and do the scan there.

My new 33" dish and SG2100 is coming next week, but I figured I would try to see if I could get anything with the pre-installed 18" dishnet dish I already had on the house. Oh well, I guess I will have to wait. Thanks for the advice. I will let you guys know if I get the different satellites next week.

wejones · #11 (**permalink**) 07-31-2005, 09:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stockgurubear

I know the receiver had the Power scan function. What I was doing was the initial setup where you can choose the satellite you want, change the TP and whether it is 22khz or Diseq, etc. I would see the Power Level go up and then go ahead and do the scan there.

Oh. OK. That should be a "Satellite Scan" then, not a Power Scan. In this mode, like what another responder said, the receiver doesn't look for new transponder freqs, but uses the freq/SR values stored in memory. If the Freq/SR values found in memory for whatever sat you pull up happen to match freq/sr values it encounters on the sat you are aimed at, it will lock in those transponders. Actually, it's not necessarily the raw freq that's important, but the downconverted freq, but that's another matter.
The thing that's confusing to me, is that most of the transponders on the sat you are aimed at have SR values of 20,000, although I think there are a couple that are 21,500 or something. When you tell the receiver to try tuning another of the Echo sats, it is logical that it would find lots of signals on your 148 sat, because those sats use a lot of the same freq/SR values. However the confusing thing is the IA5/IA6 results you described, because I couldn't find any transponder on IA5 or IA6 that had a 20,000 or 21,500 SR value and would be locked in by a Satellite scan. So I don't understand how it found anything on those two sats.
However the difference may be in the age of your receiver. Ie satellite freq/sr list in your receiver may be different from the freq/sr list in my receiver. When you pull up IA5 or IA6 in the Antenna setup page you described above, you see a TP line about 3 lines from the bottom. If you go to that line, and scroll through the various transponders listed, I don't come up with any transponders with a 20,000 or 21,500 SR value on my receiver. I'm curious whether one might be listed there on your receiver? If there is no TP with the proper SR value, I can't understand how the receiver managed to find anything on what it thought was that satellite. Of course, if you then did a Power Scan, it would find whatever was actually on 148, but you said you didn't do that.
Anyway, I'm curious whether you find any transponder that has freq/sr values close enough to light up the level/quality bars on that screen.