A friend has an unused Sky installation, and I have an unused basic satellite decoder. While she has access to Freeview via UHF, I thought it was worth a try to see if we could get SBS for her as well. The decoder is a Satlink 2800 and worked fine for FV/SBS on my 90 cm dish with my dual output LNB.
There is no label on her LNB - it was oval and "double throated". I guessed it was probably 11300 MHz, or if not that, then 10750 MHz. I tried both of those to no avail.
I repointed the dish by compass and eyeball and shouting, but no good.
Next, I got a sat meter and repointed that way - I was definitely pointing at something (and of course proved that power was reaching the meter), but still no signal.
I tightened the bolts and got off the roof, but thought I'd try just one more thing. I had it in the back of my mind, rightly or wrongly, that some Sky LNBs were 10600 LO. I gave that a go and presto! Freeview reception, but no SBS. At least I could be confident I'd found Optus D1 though.
Next time, with the aid of some wireless intercoms with her watching signal levels on the TV display and relaying them, I tweaked the dish alignment, focus, and skew, trying to optimise the level for SBS - no joy.
I gave up again, having only made things worse as there is now no DVB-S FV reception either. That's no big deal of course as she has UHF.
So, my current thinking is:
- the 10600 LNB can't handle V polarisation (there's no other box holding it in H),
- it's old and weak, or
- the dish is just too small to do the job.
There's probably a budget for a new LNB at around $20 or so, but a bigger dish isn't worth the cost for the additional benefit she'd receive from two more channels that could disappear any day (good though they are).
Any thoughts?