Humax freesat and dish install

[brk1]

I bought a sky dish package from ebay some time ago >> Dish ,zinwell quad lnb ,suitable amount of twin cable, f connectors and cable clips,all 100% brand new never been used, I then bought the Managers special "A" grade Humax 320 gb freesat box. I set the box up, fitted the dish with twin cables and F connectors, all continuity checked to make sure cable was correct,walked up and down the street to get a good idea with my compass, fitted the dish as accurately as possible then got the strongest audible/meter signal possible using a satellite finder meter.

Switching on the Humax box (apart from when finding the sat signal),it clearly cannot find a signal at all, it just sits there searching, if you do a search it doesn't find a signal either from within the Humax menu, when I go to manual tune, it finds no freesat channels ,just a total of 19 non freesat channels,all extremely foreign TV and radio stations.

I'm not convinced the meter is working properly though so this could well be my problem, sometimes the audible signal goes higher and lower as you swing the dish around ,the next moment, you could turn the dish 360 degrees and the tone wouldn't change at all, so I have three possibilities that could be wrong

1. Dish is aligned wrongly
2.Quad LNB is faulty
3.Grade A Receiver is not working properly

If the dish was out by a small amount surely it would still pick up a signal,even if avery poor signal and manage to transmit something to me?

Any ideas help would be greatly appreciated, I could try a total manual approach to setting up the dish, I.m a carpenter by trade and can easily fit hand cut roofs so I won't have a problem working out the angles by a compass and level, actually my iPhone has an app that would find the 25.3 degrees very accurately, I just got fed up yesterday using the sat meter to it's strongest reading and getting no signal at all,I left it before the frustration got the better of me, and we had the first reported flying disk shaped UFO in the street lol

 

[AdrianMealing]

If the dish was out by a small amount surely it would still pick up a signal

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Needs to be bang on, did one of these for my dad about two years ago, you might also want to check the Humax is actually powering the LNB and that you have the correct voltage polarisation for the box, have a look at this site, loads of info http://www.satcure.co.uk/

 

[brk1]

Thanks for answering, I might well have to get another sat meter, as from powering the LNB, it must be sending power up the cable for the meter to be able to work,whether that power is enough I don't know, the manual says nothing extra about powering the LNB, just that it must be connected to a properly aligned dish, this kit is basically a standard sky installation kit which points to the same Astra sat that sky uses for its services, it must be sending over 13v for the meter to be able to work in the first place so I hope it should be O.K. Thanks for the link to Satcure, I'll do some reading and post on their forums as well.

Just read from a different source that the Humax doesn't like to play ball with the trial and error methods straight out of the box, it must be connected to a properly aligned dish for initial set up, it won't show you the signal/quality settings until it has been set up at least once, then it will find them by turning the dish until it picks up the required signal.

 

[streetlighter]

Sounds like you have lined the minidish up on the wrong satellite easily done using a cheap satellite finder as they dont show wich sat you have locked onto.
The ones you want are Astra 2 at 28.2 degrees east of south,but next to that satellite is the old Astra 19.2 east and hotbird 13 east all are very high powered and easy to find.
Takes a bit of trial and error to finding a satellite but gets easier with time.
Try www.dishpointer.com for some guidance

 

[brk1]

I've got a feeling your right there,the dish doesn't look a long way out compared to other peoples, the elevation might be a bit high most say it's better to be a bit low than high as it helps bounce the signal back into the LNB, were supposed to have rainy weather for the next three days or so, then I'll try again,I've actually marked a piece of plywood from the front of my house with a line for magnetic north, then I have marked it at 148.2 degrees which is the magnetic azimuth angle required for astra 28.2 E . I'll see what happens, from watching some of those caravan set up for dishes you just have to have your wife shout out to you when a signal appears lol. Unfortunately the Humax won't work that way out of the box, my best bet would be to wave some notes under a Sky engineers nose if one appears in the street, it's all fixed on the wall with the cable and everything going to it, 2 mins of fine adjustment would sort it out.

 

[streetlighter]

An independant satellite install would prob only charge around£30/40 to align the dish onto the satellite if its not a special heights job.
Other method would be to borrow a Sky Digibox and use the on screen signal test and wait for it to display lock OK and 002, o7d4 that will tell you the astra 2 satellite has been found.

 

[brk1]

I used the easy method in the end ,catch the sky man at the end of the road and give him a drink,now got 85% signal strength and pretty much 100% quality most of the time now, just got to see how far the signal will drop in bad weather now , saved me borrowing my mates old sky box and locking that in, would still probably not got that good a signal if I had

 

[streetlighter]

Glad its all set up and working for you. To see how much the rain will afffect the signal stick a damp cloth over the LNB on the dish.

 

[turboyoshi]

I used the easy method in the end ,catch the sky man at the end of the road and give him a drink,now got 85% signal strength and pretty much 100% quality most of the time now, just got to see how far the signal will drop in bad weather now , saved me borrowing my mates old sky box and locking that in, would still probably not got that good a signal if I had

Hi brk1. I have exactly the same problem as you had. I've bought a Humax-HDR and a satellite kit from eBay (MK4 dish, with a Zinwell J4S Quad LNB).

Once I set everything up I got no signal being displayed on either of the tuners on the Humax diagnostics page.

When I plug my sat finder in to the LNB and the receiver cable, I get no power on the finder. Did you also find this? What is weird is that if I plug the other cable from the receiver into the LNB and leave the tester plugged into the LNB and the other cable, I do then get power on the sat finder. However, it does not find any satellite signals (and I have 2 satellites near by as a reference).

I've tested the Humax box on a mates satellite set-up and it works fine. I've also checked the F-connectors for stray bits of cable and they all appear clear.

I'm so frustrated at the moment. Tempted to get an engineer out but don't want to be ripped off if the LNB is indeed dead.

 

[digdilem]

Worked first time for me! I printed out loads of stuff on those at-finder sites, including a map of the direction and a distant landmark to aim at. The angle was very flat and I thought I'd done it wrong since it was just peeking over the horizon (Devon), but 100%/100% when I went back in to test. Again, Humax - a dual tuner.

I did use a large 80cm dish that I had spare from earlier experimentation, but in an area where freeview is apalling, freesat is awesome.

Some notes on installation: I put mine on a pole, and on a windy day it blew around so much the coax pulled out of the f-connector. Fixed with three stay wires to various other parts of the roof. Never lost signal since, including rain, hail and snow storms. Quad lnb, 2 to the main tv, two to a pc running mythtv for recording.

 

[brk1]

My sat finder picked up a signal just fine, it wasn't from Astra 28.2 E though when I did it the first time,I also tried all manner of methods to align the dish, even form holding a large flat piece of ply against my wall I was fitting it to, marking where North was then setting a line for the correct place to line up the dish, still didn't get astra.The majority of the time the engineer said the dish was pointing too high, mine was, and slightly a bit too far to the South, after using his proper meter on it, the signal was there instantly,I had to retune the freesat box to get the stations set up properly, especially the region specific channels .

@ Turboyoshi

If you box has now been set up from a mates Sky satellite, you should be able to tune your set without a sat finder meter,put it onto BBC1 then move your dish back and forwards until you pick up a signal apparently Astra 28.2e is the only Sat that broadcasts this station, you can't use this method until your Humax has been set up, but can do it after it has. My sat meter didn't work brilliant, it got louder/quieter as I moved the Dish about but the signal wasn't coming from 28.2E Sat, nor would it really distinguish between the different sats that were up there and I tried several times with both methods, you've only got to be a fraction out to receive nothing at all, 1/2 a degree out at your dish represents hundreds of miles out by the time it was pointing towards the Satellite

If your Quad LNB is dead they're only about £4 on Ebay or were, you'll never get any kind of picture unless it is pointing towards a satellite, nearly is not good enough ,I managed 7 foreign TV stations and 12 foreign radio stations on my first attempt, then found nothing at all the more I played around with it,without a good sat meter for initial set up it's pretty damned hard to find the sat or was in my location.

Even the iPhone app Dishpointer pro still wouldn't set it up, pointing "too high in the sky" to get the proper signal in the first place a lot of people say you can get away with having the dish not far off level and still manage to tune it in,I know mine was too high and that wasn't tilted up very much

 

[turboyoshi]

Thanks for the quick replies all, appreciated.

Today I tried a universal single LNB on my dish with the Humax recorder, but again when I used a sat finder (both an electronic and analogue finder) it did not register that it was receiving any power. I'd have that that with the receiver on it would send a current down the wire, but this does not appear to be happening. Did any of you get this behaviour?

@brk1 - In your first post you said you got a loud signal from your sat finder, was it being powered by the Humax receiver, or did it have it's own power source?

When I tried re-tuning my receiver with the new LNB, I had to loose the programmed channels which I got from my mates house. I think I'll get it set up at his house again to try your suggested method (i.e. leave it on BBC1 and do some dish moving).