Technical advice -antennas and satellite dishes

[JeffH]

If you have any technical questions about TV reception;
•Antennas
•Cabling and splitters
•Amplifiers (often called "boosters")
•Satellite TV
and such like.

Please feel free to ask me. I almost manage to make a living doing installation and repairs to this type of equipment -sometimes I actually come out ahead on the finances.

To get started here are a couple of links that could be of interest;
•The restack of digital television services Hidden in this page is the reason why many people, who have recently upgraded an aerial system for digital reception may have to upgrade again very shortly!
•Viewer Access Satellite Television This is all about the free to air, digital, satellite TV. Note -this initially came up in my browser as an untrusted site. It is an Australian Government sponsored site and is actually safe.

Cheers,
Jeff

[Robster]

Thanks Jeff. Will keep in mind.!!!

[stevo1962]

Hey Jeff do you know how to reset a foxtel receiver to receiving
all of the channels?

[Fulvio]

Hey Jeff do you know how to reset a foxtel receiver to receiving
all of the channels?

If you mean reset, hold Select and Back on the front of the box. If you mean hack to steal premium channels, you can't.

[JeffH]

Fulvio is on the right track. To be sure need to know type of receiver -cable or satellite?

[Unicorn]

Thank you Jeff for the kind offer to answer questions.

I live in a hole at 50m (200m hills to the east, 300m north, 250m south, 600+m west) so there is no direct line of sight to any of the transmission towers hence we need an amplifier to get a decent reception.  The old one we had worked great (an Alcad AM-126 Laceys.tv) but it's kicked the bucket. I've been going to get one of the Hills Q-Amp Digitial amps (specificly designed only to amp the digital range).

Have you had any experience with these? Are they OK?

Thanks heaps.

Post note: They're masthead amps ..... but you probably knew that eh!

[interest]

Jeff. there are some people down the road with a huge satellite dish in their front yard.
Reception in our area is not a problem so what would they be getting?

[robbiegal]

news from Mars
at 7.00
every night

(couldn't help myself)

[Fulvio]

what would they be getting?

Depends on several factors.. mostly where its pointed and what's plugged into it. There are a huge number of satellites up there, and you can pick up any that are visible from your location. What they carry, and whether its encrypted, is another matter. Generally speaking though, anything coming into the country, internal network traffic, and public access stuff is unencrypted, so there's a lot of fun to be had.

Not as much fun as a few years ago before Foxtel changed their encryption though.. you used to be able to get all their channels back then if you knew how.
Oh, and speaking of fun with dishes...

I knew a guy years ago who lived in the Yarra Valley. He and a mate on Mt Dandenong, both amateurs, bought a couple of government surplus 30m dishes, and planted them in their back yards. Now there's not a lot of call for dishes that size... so for a bit of a challenge, they used them to talk to each other on the 2m VHF amateur band. Not a big deal I hear you say, since you could cover that short distance with a handheld and a wet bit of string. But they did it.... via the moon! 2m moonbounce is not something you come across every day...

[JeffH]

The Hills Q amp is one of the better ones available. There is a new, upgraded model now available which promises better performance but I haven't tested one of those yet.
Digital reception can operate well with much less signal level than analogue required for a good (snow free) picture. But the signal "quality" is all important. Any signal processing, such as an amplifier, will reduce the quality. As a rule of thumb the lower, the "noise figure" an amplifier has, the better the quality of the amplified signal.
The Hills LNDA amplifier is lower gain than the Q amp but has a better noise figure.
From comparative testing the best noise figure of any commonly available amplifier is the Kingray MDA series. Has similar gain to the Hills LNDA.
With these lower gain amplifiers a distribution amplifier may also be required to maintain adequate signal level for multiple TV outlets.
Some of the European amplifiers distributed by Laceys also offer very good performance. Many of the Chinese amplifiers are inferior but they are improving (same with antennas and Chinese antennas are mostly now comparable with Australian made units).
A large satellite dish [say 1.8m+] is probably a left over from the past when satellite transmissions were much lower frequency and power than newer ones. May be overkill for what they are receiving now but, why change it if it works. Or they may be wanting a particular signal from a satellite well toward the horizon. Some satellite internet providers use a satellite way out over the Indian Ocean and need a relatively large dish (which is pointed west at a low angle). Two way satellite internet (where your computer is sending signal back to the satellite as well as receiving) requires a reasonably large dish -we are talking very small signal levels here. A satellite internet connection that uses satellite for download and phone for upload only requires a small dish comparable to pay TV dish.
Is it a solid surface or mesh surface dish?

As to what the people down the road are receiving? Only way to find out is to ask them; could be any of hundreds of transmissions. Take your pick from here Asia & Pacific. The main ones servicing Australia are in the range of 169ºE to 152ºE.
Many transmissions are "scrambled" and require a paid subscription to decode. Many transmissions are foreign languages and not of great interest to English only speakers.
PS. If you want to receive ABC and SBS TV via satellite then you don't need an expensive "VAST" receiver with a registered smartcard.
They use Optus D1 satellite for downlinks to their transmitter sites around the country and these signals are not encrypted. Optus D1 at 160.0°E
Any generic satellite receiver is suitable -as long as you are happy to forgo high definition- and these can be picked up for next to nothing on eBay. Dish size will depend on your location but an ex-Pay TV dish from your area can usually be obtained free (you may have to recover it yourself) by asking around.

[JeffH]

a couple of government surplus 30m dishes

¿que?
Are you sure? A 30m dish is about the same surface area as a suburban block of land or six Olympic swimming pool lengths across! Here are some 22m dishes near Narrabri.

I know of some 3m amateur dishes and 6m is about as big as they get. I have a 2.1m dish here and that is fairly large for a backyard. It was installed originally for the Remote Area Broadcasting Service and I replaced it with an 85cm dish a few years ago for the newer service. Customer didn't want the old dish so I thought it would be worth grabbing.

An ex-Navy man near here has a 30 foot (about 10m) dish he brought with him when he left the service. Bet his kit bag was full when he walked out the gate!
He uses it to receive the VAST free to air digital service. It is rotatable -he has fitted an HQ Holden disk brake to stop it moving in the wind.
A 65cm dish would suffice.

[Unicorn]

With these lower gain amplifiers a distribution amplifier may also be required to maintain adequate signal level for multiple TV outlets.

Thanks heaps for the advice Jeff and for bringing the above to my attention. We do have a few in the house so I might need one of these too.

[JeffH]

Try it first without a distribution amp. If all fine then end of story.
Quality of distribution amp. is not critical (head amp has biggest effect on overall quality). And, don't be sucked into buying a distribution amp. with very high gain -10db to 18db is adequate for a household installation.
Check with me first before buying one and I can point you in the right direction.

And virtually every digital TV and STB has some sort of signal indicator (often "strength" and "quality") built into the menu system. This is handy for checking that anything you are doing is making improvements -good for fine tuning antenna aim too.

Jeff

[robbiegal]

what would they be getting?

hr]
Oh, and speaking of fun with dishes...

I knew a guy years ago who lived in the Yarra Valley. He and a mate on Mt Dandenong, both amateurs, bought a couple of government surplus 30m dishes, and planted them in their back yards. Now there's not a lot of call for dishes that size... so for a bit of a challenge, they used them to talk to each other on the 2m VHF amateur band. Not a big deal I hear you say, since you could cover that short distance with a handheld and a wet bit of string. But they did it.... via the moon! 2m moonbounce is not something you come across every day...

now that would be COOL - plenty of shade for the car - unless it got fried before it cooled down
I went to the dish at Parkes on the way down to Canberra when we moved
and then  up to Stomlo observatories and then the Tidbinbilla dishes when we got here
I think it is all fab

[Fulvio]

Are you sure?

Yeah. While I never walked out the back to it (it sat on the ground), The tower and beam antennas mounted on top of it are visible for quite a ways, and I took the numbers on faith.

Looking at Google Maps, it looks like he's still there... maybe I should go for a drive with a tape measure one day?

Or... see if you can scale off the satellite image:
https://maps.google.com.au/maps?q=635+Beenak+Road,+Seville,+Victoria&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x6ad629dbf6d1955f:0x59d156ccb3435d6b,635+Beenak+Rd,+Seville+VIC+3139&gl=au&ei=TV7bUqfMEcbDkwWE6IHYAw&ved=0CCYQ8gEwAA