Satelitte Dish

Satelitte Dish

Author
Discussion

Tom1981

Original Poster:

218 posts

255 months

Tuesday 9th May 2017
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Hi folk's,

Going to bring a TV setup for the first time this year. What size dish can I get away with at Le Mans to pickup Sky signal OK?

Thanks
Tom

johnhere

168 posts

197 months

Tuesday 9th May 2017
quotequote all
You can get away with the small portable dish but remember the smaller the dish the more accurate the alignment on the LNB to the satellite has to be.

MadMacMcMad

1,266 posts

253 months

Tuesday 9th May 2017
quotequote all
I use an 800mm dish. Works well. Bigger the better.
Worth grabbing a spare LNB from Carrefour.

ukcobra

211 posts

237 months

Tuesday 9th May 2017
quotequote all
There are lots of historical threads on this. You may want to check them out.
Some suggestions :

Get a decent 80cm Dish and Mount, some campsites have trees or obstructions.
Get someone who knows how to align it well. We have an ex-Sky installer and he still had problems aligning it manually.
German Eurosport is still FTA and you can get Radio Le Mans for audio via an FM Radio. This is what we do.
Have spares for connectors and cables etc.

Tom1981

Original Poster:

218 posts

255 months

Wednesday 10th May 2017
quotequote all
Thank you folks! 80cm was what I was thinking thanks. Now to find a nice collapsible unit.

Printertosh

563 posts

167 months

Thursday 11th May 2017
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I found this website handy for aligning dish, especially if you know the campsite well so can spot a few permanent objects to line up with from where you usually camp (we don't have an allocated spot so can usually camp near to the same spot every year)

go to http://www.dishpointer.com/
Type in 47.95, 0.2075 that will get you the circuit
Then drag the green satellite dish to your campsite position
Click 'All Satellites' above map
Then select satellite from dropdown list, the 2 different satellites you'll probably want are 19.2E (free german eurosport) and 28.2E (UK sky)
Then zoom in and out of the picture as big as possible to pick up a tree, pole, building to line up with on the line of sight
Then print out a few maps to follow when you get there (at least one zoomed in and one zoomed out)
Below the map is dish setup data that give you info on elevation, azimuth(?) and LNB Skew but I find that once your pointing in the right direction it's easy enough to find the elevation by watching the signal strength on the set up page of sky box or download a free phone app with an angle measurer but remember if your dish is an offset dish (LNB faces dish) you might need to deduct 22 degrees (or whatever your offset is)

I have twin offset LNB's on a 80cm dish so we can pick up both satellites at the same time without adjusting dish. I've fixed the twin LNB so that once I've picked up the main satellite the other one lines up as well as long as no ones thumped it during the year! biggrin

Good luck smile