Can't find Badr4 or Es'hailsat2 - Oscar 100

Latest News and Discussion about the use of the DATV transponder on Es'hail-2
g0mjw
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Re: Can't find Badr4 or Es'hailsat2

Post by g0mjw » Sun Feb 17, 2019 7:26 pm

With a 1.2m dish I see about 11 dB MER at best on the BBC Arabic multiplex on my satfinder. Aiming is very critical due to the strong interference adjacent. The spectrum analyser function is indispensable. Satellite finders are fairly cheap to buy and a good investment for this sort of thing.

Mike

G1BVI
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Re: Can't find Badr4 or Es'hailsat2

Post by G1BVI » Sun Feb 17, 2019 9:50 pm

Hi Dave
I feel your pain
I have just spent the last couple of days fing the Bird.
I have a Triax 80cm dish and I too kept finding the wrong satellite.
I used a combination of a meter and a V8 finder.
Once I found it I checked on LyngSat to see what I had found... then kept going.
I found its a very narrow field of view ie. you can go past it without realising.

Pity I am not closer to you. my conclusion is I need a 1.1m dish !!
73

Nick

satdxer
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Re: Can't find Badr4 or Es'hailsat2

Post by satdxer » Mon Feb 18, 2019 12:10 am

Triax dishes are horrible to set up the elivation is a pain here is a modification that will help, also make sure the pole is 100% level in two directions.
https://groups.io/g/MSG-1/topic/antenna ... 20,9672992

satdxer
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Re: Can't find Badr4 or Es'hailsat2

Post by satdxer » Mon Feb 18, 2019 12:25 am

G4IUG wrote:
Sun Feb 17, 2019 2:33 pm
.
OK, after spending far too long working on my LNB which is now a tad over 1dB noise figure and 60+ dB gain and 0.1ppm all measured on 10.50Ghz I can't find the satellite !

Using a Triax TD110 (1.1M) with its truly awful pole fixing and for completeness an out of the box Triax LNB. Astra is unbelievably strong here in South Devon.
So on the grounstand I moved the dish clockwise towards due south and using the cheap meter/beeper the next satellite is quite strong. But it has Polish, Czechoslovakian and a few German channels
, it's not BADAR4 I think ? I have tried now for over a day. The receiver is a Labgear VisableWave.

So I tried setting it to BBC Arabic 11.996, SR 27,500 and horizontal and looked at the receiver signal/quality on screen, still nothing at all sweeping the dish.

I once (20 years ago) sold shed loads of Eumetcast systems with the same type of 88cm dish, so I ought to know what I'm doing, but clearly I don't ?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Dave G4IUg Ex G8EAO, G6ANG/T
Hi Dave your moving the dish way to far most Polish channels are at 13E German 19E once you've locked Astra mark the pole and clamp with a permanent marker as a reference then its a very very small movement to the west and raise the dish a little.

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G4IUG
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Re: Can't find Badr4 or Es'hailsat2 - Oscar 100

Post by G4IUG » Mon Feb 18, 2019 10:05 am

.
Guys

Thank you for so many helpful comments. At least 3 of us have had problems and the advice of "find Astra and move a couple of degrees" does not always work.

Malcolm, I may well take you up on your kind offer and also tune my SatTV receiver on your dish next week.

Mike, SDR on it's way, thanks. And thanks for the follow up.

Noel, thanks for the links, but for me and some others they are too basic. There are many issues, like is it at 25.50 or 26.00 ? The beacons, what "exact" frequency are they on ? and more. BTW I belong to AMSAT UK, BATC, UKmicrowave, AMSAT DL, AMSAT USA, RSGB, ARRL and I can't find a page, just one page, with all up-to-date and correct information on it that is date stamped.

YL3, thanks. However for me not easy, in fact impossible, and no fun at all with the incredibly poor Triax dish !

Shaun, thanks. See you Sunday, my stand is Timestep, go in, turn right and keep going, and going, look for the turntables !

satdxer, I should have known not to buy Triax, great link but I have lost confidence, I'm going to call them this morning and also CPC who sold them to me. Also thanks for the info on 13 and 19 E !

I have to get ready for the Hi Fi Exhibition as I leave on Thursday for set-up. Distractions now are not good. But I'll regroup next week with hopefully some good news !

Regards Dave
Ex G6ANG/T and G8EAO

G8GKQ
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Re: Can't find Badr4 or Es'hailsat2 - Oscar 100

Post by G8GKQ » Mon Feb 18, 2019 10:54 am

Hi Dave

We have tried to make the BATC Wiki pages https://wiki.batc.org.uk/Es%27hail-2_Basic_Information on Es'hail-2 as complete as possible.

The page linked above gives the exact satellite location (within 0.1 of a degree) and Engineering beacon frequencies and is also time and date stamped. The band edge beacons are not strong enough to use to locate the satellite. Please tell us what it is missing and we'll add it.

Sometimes Noel and I are too close to the problem to see it from another perspective - please tell us what we need to add, or of course you can add it yourself.

Thanks for your comments

Dave, G8GKQ

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G4IUG
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Re: Can't find Badr4 or Es'hailsat2 - Oscar 100

Post by G4IUG » Mon Feb 18, 2019 11:14 am

Hi Dave

OK, I agree your page is up-to-date now, correct and date stamped. If only others were ! There is so much misleading information about.

I appreciate your page and will use it as a reference, thank you.

On my return next week, and after I have recovered I'll be in touch. You may remember who I am ? but having been out of the ham side for 20 years and I'm falling into all the holes out there, worse than that, I know I'm doing it !

Regards

Dave
Ex G6ANG/T and G8EAO

g8ayc
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Re: Can't find Badr4 or Es'hailsat2 - Oscar 100

Post by g8ayc » Wed Feb 20, 2019 10:43 pm

Hi Dave,

I thought I would weigh in with my experience, being a complete newbie at this satellite reception.

I got a 1m ICECRYPT dish from CPC and put it on a 'patio mount' at the bottom of the garden. The dish mount had calibrated elevation markings on it so I set it to 25 degrees and guessed the position of Astra. I set up FreeSat receiver and soon had Astra being received. I then replaced the receiver with an SDR scanning around 739.8 which is the beacon after being received by the LNB with an LO of 9750. I then rotated the dish very slightly to the west and I immediately saw the beacon plus some SSB stations lower down. Actually, you should be able to see the satellite's noise floor covering the whole passband of the satellite, this is great for optimising the dish's final position.

A friend of mine had similar problems to you and then discovered his LNB LO wasn't the normal 9750 so that might be worth checking.

73 Nigel G8AYC,

g8lce
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Re: Can't find Badr4 or Es'hailsat2 - Oscar 100

Post by g8lce » Thu Feb 21, 2019 12:00 am

I was receiving the beacon with a MER of 4dB with a 1.1Mtr dish. I decided to move the dish and pole a couple of feet away from the hedge in the way of the bottom of the dish. Lineing up again on the beacon took much longer the second time! I have a satellite positioner fitted to a pole and a cheap 1.1Mtr dish. Lining up due south (the home position) and then panning east found astra. Then a bit of up/down with the dish to get max signal. Pan west and found the Badr4 satellite but could not see Oscar 100 beacon! After stepping the dish back and forth (east and west ) I eventually found the beacon and MER of 6 dB. I have made a video of some of this and may edit it into a guide of sorts. The point I am trying to make here though is that sometimes even the simplest of tasks don't go to plan. Why the beacon did not appear straight away I do not know. Once you have the main TV satellites being seen then Oscar 100 is not far away. Check the beacon is on by looking at the spectrum https://eshail.batc.org.uk/wb/ and check you have the correct polarization ( horizontal ) -you may have to turn the LNB through 90 degrees if you cannot supply the correct voltage ( I think if you feed only 12v to it it will be vertically polarized ) Check that you have set your Minitioune to 2000 SR 10492.5MHz and offset 9750MHz DBS-2 H264 .
I use a satellite finder box to drive the positioner and power the LNB and still have problems for the first alignment!
One reason for using a satellite positioner is for simpler setup!! and I think it does help but the other reason is that you could use the same dish for transmitting an uplink with a 2.4GHz feed next to the LNB and then just rotate the positioner a bit . That's the theory!
Another thing I noticed when working with the shadowed dish and therefore low MER, was that the sun moving across the front of the dish seemed to lower the signal. This could well be the noise from the sun or maybe some heating effect.
As a last note - don't forget the LNB gives out a large signal and if using a SDR you may need to attenuate it.
Hope you find the beacon.

Martin G8LCE

g0mjw
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Re: Can't find Badr4 or Es'hailsat2 - Oscar 100

Post by g0mjw » Thu Feb 21, 2019 7:35 am

Trying to align on the DATV beacon is going to be hard because it is so weak. It is a lot better to align on the narrow band transponder!

Mike

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