A friend in Spain has the same FoxsatHD as myself (I'm in London). For years he's been receiving Freesat in Costa Blanca fine(he has a big dish). Recently, however, some of his favourite channels moved from transponder C2U to F4L. Works perfectly in the UK. But retuning his box in Spain doesn't give him ANY channels on F4L (12606V). He's tried a full manual scan, and does seem to be getting most of the other Freesat transponders OK.... but not F4L.
Anyone have any thoughts?
12606 V is a Eutelsat 28A (28.5E) transponder. Difficulty with 28A is frequently down to lnb skew adjustment (28.2E uses a non standard skew so a comprimise is required). Because of the tight focus of a very large dish some small alignment may help. Very very large dishes are unable to work properly with Freesat kit because they can't get 28.2 and 28.5E at the same time.
Welcome to the forum.
Many thanks, Graham. But he was happily getting all of D9S, F1U and C2U transponders.... all on 28A. He appears to be still able to get all of them, but NOT F4L. (I don't know if he EVER got F4L, though). But skew shouldn't be the issue.
I did wonder about local interference (eg DECT phones...) but I wouldn't expect that to rssult in TOTAL failure to get the frequency (and he's tried it at several times of the day, which seems to be an issue in Spain). F4L uses the same "superbeam" as C2U, so it shouldn't be a footprint issue.
I also wondered about the fact that the Foxsat appears to use 12606 Vertical (as opposed to 1260 7[b] Vertical, as listed in the technical databases)... but it works fine in London, and I guess that's a rounding issue.
Seems very strange. Why should just 1 frequency not work, when all other parameters DO seem to work OK?
The Foxsat is relatively new to me, and I did wonder if he wasn't 100% correctly obeying all the menu instructions (some of the submenu options are a little quirky)... But I've talked him through things, and I think he's selecting the right parameters.
I'm wondering if there's anything else he can test???
As you say difference is just rounding, 28A has two transponders both nominally 12606/12607
12606.65 V F4
12607.00 H F3
Failure to get one but not the other would as I said before normally be a lnb skew issue. Using manual tune select the vertical transponder and try a tiny tweak to the lnb skew to optimise the quality reading. Check the horizontal one as well.
Thanks, Graham... I've been plugging on at this, got him to try (without success) tweaking the skew. By coincidence I ran into somebody else living in North France, who is also struggling with F4L.
Then I managed to track down a bit of a tech guru... He tells me there are there are two issues potentially affecting viewers in mainland Europe trying to get access to UK Sky and Freesat broadcasts.
One is that the box itself, if it's an old one, will just not cope at 12,607 Mhz. Not true of the FoxSat though.
The other sounds plausible. Older LNBs, and some still sold on the continent with big dishes [which sometimes even have two LNBs (one for each polarisation)] - will not necessarily have a high band local oscillator at 10.6Ghz, which is essential to get the F4L frequency. The Universal LNB is not necessarily what is fitted on a big dish on the continent.
In the UK, we don't have this problem, since virtually all have minidishes with universal LNBs.
It's stretching my tech understanding, but it makes sense, even though it's bad news in the sense that it needs some new kit. It also explains why someone in North France (large dish, but uncertain about the LNB) would also have problems only on high frequency transponders like F4L.
Make sense to you?
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