Any succesful Nimiq2 upgrades?

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BEVinBOS

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Folks,

I'm thinking about upgrading my trusty 18" dish that has been working fine for 7 years now, and going with the Nimiq2 upgrade to get sat 82 along with 91.

However, the tips/troubleshooting thread for aligning a 20" dish with two LNBF's is pretty daunting and discouraging. Being a southern subscriber, I can't just call an installer in if I screw it up. And while I've pointed 18" dishes successfully many times for both BEV and the local provider down here, I've never done a multi-sat dish. My D****tv tri-sat dish was put up by installers when I moved to my current house.

Also, all the fussing with the multi-switch seems to be a pain and a perpetually weak link in the line, not to mention a primitive method of installation. The D* tri-sat dish has a built-in multi-switch behind the three LNBFs at the end of the mast arm. You can't even reach the outputs of the individual LNBF's. You simply run a single wire from each port at the end of the mast-arm to each receiver, and it just works! I'm not familiar with the DishPro set-up.... does that achieve a similar thing, and will a DishPro Dish500 acquired down here work with BEV sats at 91 and 82, and my BEV receiver?

All if which leads to the key question.... despite all I read, how many of you out there have successfully done a Nimiq2 upgrade with full success or minimal difficulties? Just wondering if what I read here is the trials of an unfortunate small minority with difficult equipment, or if this is what the vast majority go through?

Thanks
 
Its actually easier to aim with the two dual LNBs. Set the skew, aim one, add the other, add the SW21 and do a check switch. Thats it. Its really quite easy.

If you don't want a switch you could use a Legacy Twin or Dish Pro Twin depending on which receiver you have.
 
Back when i first went to HD and needs both sats, the setup wasn't that difficult.
I by-passed the switch, aimed for 82 and 91 magically appreared on the other LNB. Then i couldn't get the checkswitch to work. Very fustrating.

It turned out to be a shorted cable, all my fault!!

I've aimed dishes for work and for freinds, hasn't been a problem. I now test cables first!! And then i check each feed separately before hooking up any switches.
 
I don't see why client insist on doing that upgrade themselves...it's free to get it professionally done, why not take advantage of it? You just pay the cost of the upgrade piece (if it's just to get certain 82 sat channels) or call to say you bought a HD receiver and they will do the work for you. The upgrade piece wll be charged on your credit card and re-inburshed on your first Express Vu bill after you added programming requiring the 82 bird. You must keep the programmng for 6 months...

I had a professionnal installation of the 82 bird last year at the same time they installed my 5900 receiver. I get a signal that varies between 90% and 100% depending on the transponder...
 
He wants to do it himself as he lives in the States.

Not that hard to do. Hook up the 91 lnb. Point the dish just like you did with the 18 inch dish. Peak 91. Then put on the 82 lnb. See what your signal is at. Skew to peak. Hook up the SW21 and check switch. Done.
 
One other question....

Will the 20" dish just replace the 18" dish without having to replace the mast?
Or does the 20" dish use a wider/different-diameter mast?

I really don't want to have to unscrew one mast off the side of the house, and put a new one on its place.

Thanks
 
Well, the 20" dish finally made it from Toronto, and the dual-sat install worked flawlessly.

I took the old 18" dish off its mast, put the 20" one on, with the skew and elevation already set. Following Nimiq1's instructions, I connected the 91 LNBF only to the receiver, twisted the dish around and got a signal from 91 within a few % of what I picked up on the 18" dish. I switched the cables, connecting the 82 LNBF to the receiver, and got a good signal on that too. I put the switch in place, did Checkswitch, and it all worked instantly.

The whole thing took less than an hour, and most of that time was maneuvering the old dish off the mast and getting the new one on while hanging out the window! So - in answer to my original question - the Nimiq2 upgrade can be done easily in some instances! While my sympathies go out to those struggling with their installs, it was good to know for some, it can work out OK.

However, a follow-up question for the experts out here. The signal on 82 is a good deal lower than on 91. However, it seems 91 is almost as good as before with the 18" dish. Here's the signal strengths (clear, bright sunny morning) on 91, with the 18" dish just before I took it down, and the new 20":
TP - 18" - 20"
1: - 90 - 86
2: - 87 - 87
3: - 93 - 96
4: - 95 - 95
5: - 86 - 83
6: - 84 - 82
7: - 98 - 95
8: - 92 - 89
9: - 96 - 93
10: - 98 - 92
11: - 98 - 95
12: - 99 - 96
13: - 90 - 85
14: - 85 - 82
15: - 93 - 87
16: - 87 - 83
17: - 95 - 92
18: - 96 - 92
19: - 91 - 87
20: - 87 - 83
21: - 95 - 92
22: - 95 - 91
23: - 96 - 93
24: - 94 - 90
25: - 95 - 89
26: - 92 - 91
27: - 91 - 88
28: - 88 - 84
29: - 90 - 87
30: - 87 - 84
31: - 91 - 87
32: - 90 - 89

Average: - 92 - 89 - decrease in signal strength: 3.1

I know the dual-sat dishes are a bit of a compromise to hit both satellites, so I was pretty happy with these results on 91. It seemed a decrease of only 3% across all transponders was pretty good, and the signal is probably still higher than I achieved in the past when the 18" dish was in less-than-optimum locations.

Still, I was little disappointed with how much lower most of the signal strengths on 82 were:

1: - 76
2: - 77
3: - 72
4: - 84
5: - 74
6: - 72
7: - 74
8: - 78
9: - 89
10: - 77
11: - 76
12: - 80
13: - 66
14: - 73
15: - 77
16: - 80
17: - 63
18: - 72
19: - 61
20: - 77
21: - 74
22: - 73
23: - 61
24: - 78
25: - 92
26: - 72
27: - 87
28: - 75
29: - 75
30: - 72
31: - 91
32: - 73

Perhaps the bigger concern here is the range of variability of signal strength. The ave is ~ 76, but there's some TP's in the low 90's, and some in the low 60's. I never thought to point the 18" dish at 82 before taking it down, so don't know what I could have achieved with it.

I only got the 20" dish to pick up one international channel on 82, and only to watch that intermittently. The main goal is still to have the best signals on 91.

So - is there anything to be gained by trying to tweak the elevation or skew from the pre-set values, now the azimuth is set correctly? Or will any modifications likely make things worse? Is this about as good as it gets?

Thanks
 
What you are seeing is the result of the fact that Express Vu have 4 birds in orbit, 3 are getting quite old and late in their service lives, the other was faulty almost from the time they unfurled the Solar Panels.

So, what you are seeing is quite typical, your signals on 82 should improve next Spring with the launch of Nimiq 4 that is going to slot in at that location.

If you had connected 82 degrees a couple of weeks ago you would have seen about 8 dead transponders, these have since been turned on but levels overall are slightly lower.

Don't panic just yet.
 
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