Satellites

I am no expert in Satellite broadcasting but following the collapse of Telmicro I have learnt a lot and in particular I have found a number of websites which provide useful information and this page is to direct you to those sites and give you some idea of what's involved. You probably have websites you have found that are not listed here and if you believe they are better than I have found then please let me know.

I DO NOT INSTALL SATELLITE TV SYSTEMS, PLEASE DON'T ASK.

First thing is where do I point my dish and this little tool will show you, just drag the green blob over your property and click + to zoom in then note a landmark along the green line.

I have set Eurobird as the default satellite because it is a much stronger signal in Torrevieja than Astra and is more likely to be successful for you. It is widely believed that you need a dish of gigantic proportions  to receive any signals at all. This is just not true. I have installed 80cm dishes with free to air receivers for friends and typically get 100 or so stations in English. With a 1.1Mtr dish I got 264 stations. These will NOT include any of the mainstream UK entertainment channels but you will get BBC News, Sky News, CNN News, True Movies, True Movies 2, Cinemoi and a whole host of pop music and shopping channels not to mention all the BBC radio stations. The 80cm dishes and receivers can be purchased as a kit from Ardys near the big Carrefour, Carrefour and AKI in the Habaneras shopping centre, they cost about €60 for the dish and receiver.  You will also need a mounting kit which contains 20Mtr of cable, the brackets for wall mounting and the connectors, these are available from the same places and cost €20.

Strangely the mounting kit does not include the large bolts and Rawplugs which need to be bought separately. Remember when mounting your dish that we have very high winds at certain times of the year so the installation must be very secure or the dish will move or even worse come down to earth.

 When lining up your dish you need to be aware that 1mm of movement on your mounting pole will make a big difference to the signal. Another point to watch is the SKEW this is the angle the LNB (the bit in the middle of the dish) is rotated away from vertical and in which direction. The angle of skew is in the notes under the aerial picture. For Astra and Eurobird the skew is around 30 degrees anticlockwise when viewed from behind the dish.

While trying to locate the satellite it helps to have your receiver set to a frequency you should actually receive. I do this by going into TP list in the Installation menu, making sure I am set to Eurobird and then use the up and down keys to find 11954MHz H. This is where BBC News lives and that has appeared on every installation I have done. Signal strength will be usually mid-range even before you start moving the dish, when you are pointing at the satellite the Strength will jump to around 90% and Quality should be around 60 or 70 %

If you are going to have a go yourself then a simple satellite finder is a great aid. These can be bought on EBay for around £3 and give an indication of the signal strength while you are on the roof playing with the dish. It can be very frustrating trying to use the signal strength meter in the receiver because they are so slow to react and you usually need another person to yell at you when you get it right.

Just to stress the point, the satellites are around 23,500 miles away and you are trying to locate an object 27 feet by 7 feet. That is quite a feat and patience is required!

Once you have acquired the satellite signal you need to do a single satellite search. Set the search to FTA only and if you get the option allow it to do a Network search. Do not panic when the first few results report Failed, this is normal on a small dish, after a few fails you will see a list of TV and radio stations appear and you know you deserve a beer and a sit down.

What channels might I get

This site lists all the worlds satellites and the channels you might find from them.

I have found some signals but they are all foreign

This site is similar to Lyngsat but will let you search for a TV station and tell you which satellites you might be pointing at. Then you can decide which way to move your dish to get the right satellite.

Just type the name of a station you have in the search box at the top right.