[staso]

hi all!

I'm working on my first setup and it's been good so far except the fact
that it's not working

right now I have pansat 2500 clone that is not flushed and I use it as
a sat finder only at this time.

I built my own flat roof dish mount and put the dish on the roof. I set the skew
and elevation according to dishpointer and when it came to azimuth I got
my first problem. the compass on my roof (condo building) was all over the
place - must be some metal in the roof or something so I couldn't use it.

using picture from dishpointer site I figured the angle between where I have
to point the dish and the side of the building and pointed the dish as accurate
as I could.

I have 110/119/121 coming to dpp44 and cable going from the roof to the
receiver. it didn't matter how much I try to turn the dish, the receiver showed
~30% of the signal and 0 quality. the same as if I didn't have a cable connected
to the receiver at all.

I thought it was a cable from the switch to the receiver (I screwed up the connector
when I was routing the cable thru the roof port and had to crimp another one). but then
I was thinking that the receiver wasn't powering dpp44 and lnbs since dpp44 is kinda
power hungry.

today I brought a small tv and the receiver to the roof and connected 110 lnb directly
to the receiver. after some small adjustments I got 85% signal and 99% quality
(is this sufficient?). I scanned 110 echo sat and got all the channels, however none
of them seem to show anything. I believe the receiver is not flushed, so that's what
I should see, right?

right after that I noticed that receiver still showed 85% signal and 0% of quality!
is there any reason why the quality would drop to zero while the signal stay at 85?

trying to see if my cable that was going from dpp44 to the receiver was bad I used a
very short jumper cable from the switch to the receiver and got 50% signal, so maybe
receiver can power the switch with the short cable?

so should I get FTA 4x1 diseqc switch like DMS international, LAVA and such, and
would I be able to use it without power inserter? should I figure out why my quality dropped
to zero first?

thanks for the help!

[jpeterson]

Okay. You are doing pretty good for a first timer. Trying different things is the best way to learn about FTA.

1. The signal level tells you the status of the LNB, not about how good you are pointed. The quality is what you need to watch as you align your dish. You should have a good signal first confirming that the LNB is connected correctly to the receiver. Then as you align the dish, you watch your quality.

2. If you are using a DPP44 switch, it needs to be powered and I don't think the pansat can power the switch. As you thought, the easy fix is to get a disecq switch unless you want to run multiple receivers. A disecq is the best way to go is you have only one receiver.

3. Makes sure your setup is correct. Typical settings are --
Satellite..............Echostar 7 (119°W)
LNB power..............ON
LNB Type...............OCS-DP
LNB Freq...............11250
22KHz..................OFF
TP Freq................12239
DiESqC 1.0.............Port 1
Motor..................OFF
Legacy SW..............None

Satellite..............EchoStar 8,10 (110°W)
LNB Power .............ON
LNB Type...............OCS-DP
LNB Freq...............11250
22KHz..................OFF
TP Freq................12224
DiESqC 1.0.............Port 2
Motor..................OFF
Legacy SW..............None

4. Once you get all your setup complete, you will need the latest bin for the pansat. Not sure what you mean flushed...unless you mean flashed. If so, yes, you need to download the latest bin and "flash" it to the pansat. For that I recommend that you upgrade your membership so you can download the files.

5. Also get channelmaster that will allow you to modify your channel lists and favorites much easier than using your receiver. Check out lyngsat.com where you can find channels lists for the satellites you are looking at.

Hope that gets you going and let us know if you need anything else. And note that DN is implementing the new N3 encryption and slowly we are loosing channels. All adult and international channels are already black.

[mountaineer]

Great job jpeterson !!!