Ka-Sat dish alignment

Check that you have the cables not crossed over. Check that the F connectors are good.  The centre wire pin should be 1.5mm proud of the rim of the plug.  The pin should go into the hole and not push back when the plug is tightened.  The braid must make good connection with the plug outer body.  There must be no fragments of foil or braid wire short circuiting the power supply. Use a magnifing glass if necessary.

If you are in the Perpignan/Narbonne area try all of the beam types: 1, 2 and 3.
Ref:  http://www.satsig.net/tooway/satellite-dish-pointing-ka-sat-tooway-europe.htm

The most reliable way to point a dish is to set the elevation angle accurately and then swing the dish boldly.  The elevation scale will be wrong if the pole is not exactly vertical.  Some antennas may have a maximum elevation setting of 45 deg. Does this correspond to your equipment ? Some antennas may have a sloping wedge shaped box at the rear. The slope of this box is at right angles to the beam elevation angle.  In which case this may help: http://www.satsig.net/pointing/how-to-make-inclinometer.htm   If you fail, go up and down in 1 deg steps and swing again.  

An azimuth bearing of 171.8 deg is a little to the left of due south. The direction of the blue azimuth line (as visible in the Tooway dish pointing web page referred to above) relative to your house wall or garden fence may help.
wxw
Best regards, Eric.

[quote author=Gaia link=1314723195/0#2 date=1314790067]

 We have been subtracting 9 degrees as our pole mount is off - elevating the dish by about 9 degrees.

[/quote]

You're making things difficult for yourself with a mounting pole so far off vertical ... can you try and get it more vertical using packing washers or something like that? You'll then find the process much more manageable.

If you don't have an instruction dvd, you can use my pointing guide here:

http://www.bigdishsat.com/pdf/KaSat-DIY.pdf

Hi Eric and Big Dish Sat,

Thanks! I have been following your guide BDS!  It's much better and more detailed than what came with the system. Called in a professional installer yesterday to do the 'pointage' and even he couldn't get the TRIA to change its beep tone.  So SkyDSL are sending a new TRIA. Hope that will do the job.

Eric, the pole is sloping backwards (thus elevating the dish more), so we've been subtracting the 9 degrees not plussing them - hope that's right?  But will try to get the pole more vertical. Am going to make an inclinometer this morning too and try that whilst we wait for the new TRIA.

Thanks so much for all your support - it really helps!
Lynda

Quote:

Follow the installation instruction of the Tooway KA-SAT Install Video step-by-step. Pointing is very easy because there is no KA satellite nearby (except Hotbird). Maybe a good idea to ask SkyDsl also for a spare modem.


Instruction video Tooway KA-SAT click here

Instruction manual Tooway KA-SAT click here

Send us a photo of the dish install.

If you still have a problem alinging your dish after you have received a new ODU, you are welcome to visit our office in Begur and setup your system at our location (only 3 hours drive) so we can test it for you (free of charge).

Please keep us updated !

If you are at beam edge (perhaps at the intersection of the beam edges of three adjacent beams) then 12 dB sounds fine to me.

Please say what are your lat/long coordinates and I will slightly move the satellite beam position on page http://www.satsig.net/tooway/satellite-dish-pointing-ka-sat-tooway-europe.htm to make beam type 2 better than type 3 for your location.

I guess the problem now is that your reseller has not told Skylogioc the MAC address of your modem.  Call your reseller and tell them the MAC address on your modem, e.g. 00:F4:2A:00:00:7E
wxw
Best regards, Eric.

I'd leave it alone for while.

It is worth recording, with date, on paper, what are the cable resistance, signal level etc for future reference, in case there is some gradual deterioration.

Waggling the cable should have no effect at all on the service.  This is a test for bad cable connection.

The dish mount should be rock solid.  Pushing gently on the dish in all directions should have no effect on the service either. A very small decrease in signal may be observed but this is of no consequence.  The signal will go down significantly during light rain but the servuce will continue operating. The service should only fail during the heaviest of rain storms.

Poor F type connector workmanship is the main problem with in-service VSAT systems.  The centre wire pin length should be just proud of the rim of the plug (1.5mm) and must actually go smoothly into the hole in the socket and not "push back" as the plug is screwed in.   The braid wire and foil sheath are important and must make good contact with the plug outer.  There must be no fragments of braid wire or foil short circuiting the connection.  The plug should be firm finger tight - don't use brute force with a spanner and damage the internals of the BUC/LNB/MODEM.  The outdoor joint must be sealed from moisture.  Liberal use of electronic grade silicone grease and wrapping in self-amalgamating rubber tape helps.  Axial crimp F plugs, which exactly match the cable type, are recommended.

Best regards, Eric.

Many thanks.

Do get the cable ends weather proofed. Due to the DC power and sea air moisture I have seen a cable with the centre pin vanished (burned black) and the braid sheath turned to white powder for a distance of 6ft down inside the cable, all within 1 month of installation !

On page http://www.satsig.net/tooway/satellite-dish-pointing-ka-sat-tooway-europe.htm I have moved spot beam 15 (type 2) about 7 miles SE.  You are close the intersection of three beams and there is some uncertainty about levels in such areas. Don't worry, there is in reality significant operating overlap and you can work fine beyond the lines shown.

Actual power levels vary from beam to beam and the beam pointings all drift around due to satellite movement, thermal effects and spacecraft attitude. It is not easy to aim the antennas at the earth with 0.015 deg precision!

Best regards, Eric.

ps:

"and spacecraft attitude."

do they tend to have good or bad attitudes?

Quote:


1) Waterproof F connector caps.



2) Read the "small prints" and or GOS documents, SkyDSL / Tooway consumer packages are NOT UNLIMITED (you will find out soon), you have a hourly, daily, 4 hour, weekly and monthly limit.

Avanti Hylas offers a real UNLIMITED service without FAP, anything you use above your monthly package will be charged extra every month without any limit (your bank account is the only limit*).

*So be careful with kids and guests

Tooway (Skylogic) Fair Access Policy (FAP)

Tooway (Skylogic) charge users according to how much they want or need to use their connections, so light or occasional users get a fairer deal than with some traditional broadband business models.

To guarantee that all users experience equitable high speed Internet access, the Tooway™ service has a policing feature to control excessive use and to enforce the subscription levels.

They call this feature the Fair Access Policy (FAP). Excessive users become limited in speed at the moment they exceed a certain threshold of transferred data volume in any given time period.

This feature has been built in to protect regular users' high quality connectivity from excessive use by just a few users customer. The volume limit depends on the service package the customer has subscribed to. If we didn't do this policing automatically, typically 80% of the available bandwidth on the network would be consumed by 20% of the customers.



Here's how the FAP translates in what each account will give you in terms of priority access on a daily basis. Remember Tooway/Skylogic never cut you off. Some providers/resellers call this an UNLIMITED service.


Tooway online usage info.

If no FAP is applied it is a free-for-all amongst all those sharing the same satellite capacity.  It can work well if no sites are greedy and if the number of sites put into the shared pool is limited by the operator.  Unfortunately, in the past, some people have had trouble with a few operators oversubscribing their services and the customers suffering severe congestion.  The problem is that satellite capacity is very expensive and the operators need a total income in excess of the cost of the satellite capacity.  On this web site we take a strong view regarding any misleading claims about shared services being described as dedicated or unlimited.

A service described as "10000 UL" leads me to think "10 Mbit/s Unlimited".

It is misleading to describe shared services as "Unlimited"  as you will be limited by the activities of others sharing the same satellite capacity.

Best regards. Eric.

Hi All,

I've been away for three weeks, so offline and unable to monitor our 'unlimited' package or downloads speeds.

Johnain, thanks it's great and yes I'd agree, once we got it up and working, it's been fantastic.  

Even survived being off for three weeks, then having the cable disconnected and re-connected a few times (we still had it temporarily coming through the window until we were sure it was all working - now in its permanent place through a hole in the wall). What do you mean by "always on" SKYPE? We use Skype continuously for client consultations too, but I was thinking of investigating a VOIP add-on to get rid of France Telecom . . .

However, I'm writing this in Notetab at the moment because today (we have very heavy and unending rain here - very unusual) the connection has gone down. So depending on it for the phone line exclusively might be a bit risky. There's always the mobile I guess.

Anyway, just called SkyDSL - it is always a pleasant surprise when you don't get their answering machine - who told us that Skylogic in Turin are having a problem (also rain?) and the whole satellite is down. So we wait.

Re FAP comments - my snazzy new Netgear router that we got to replace our old ISDN one has traffic monitoring on it (how reliable I don't know) and according to it, since we got back, on a day where we weren't at desks all day we used about 40mbytes download (computers were left on and browsers open).

Yesterday with two of us, full on for average 10 hours apiece, emailing, web browsing including video watching we used 640 mbytes download and 105 mbytes upload (that surprises me, as it's mostly emails uploaded).

Anyway, even with this - what we consider heavy - load (though we're yet to do a 90 minute webinar)that still seems to be well within the FAP limits posted by europe-satellite (thanks for that).

I'm not convinced that we have a full 10mb download speed tho'. But can't check until we get back online.  It seems a little slower than when we were first up - but hey, anything faster than 64kb is a small miracle for us, so I'm not complaining - though I will to SkyDSL if it is less than what we're paying for. They were quite good at refunding fees during the time we couldn't get the equipment from them/couldn't get connected.

<<It is misleading to describe shared services as "Unlimited"  as you will be limited by the activities of others sharing the same satellite capacity. >>

Yes I agree Eric. But not many people, in France at least, seem to like SkyDSL, so hopefully for now, they're not oversubscribing . And their initial discounted offer of 19.90 per month up to Dec 2011 (albeit with an activation fee) has gone back to 49.90 per month with no activation fee, so I guess it might be seen as quite expensive for a normal residential user . . even for 10mb speed.

Oops, just come back in and looks like we have lift off . .

Will keep you posted on download speed

Regards to all,
Lynda

Kevin in North Wales ... you must be using different Tooway dishes to those of us in France. The elevation angle marked on the dish is quite accurate ... have a look at the link below showing a close up of our Tooway dish elevation scale ... the calculated angle is 36.8 degrees and the actual angle on the dish is a smidge under 36 degrees. The dish is on a vertical patio mounted pole and the weight is pulling the pole just slightly out of vertical.

http://www.bigdishsat.com/broadband/images/elevation.JPG

Hi,

Lost my thread for a moment, name seems to have been transmuted. 

Just an update on experience with SkyDSL.  On the whole, it's been great - bar the (very) odd day when Turin is in its shroud and there are a few hours offline. We still have our trusty Numeris (ISDN) connection, so just plug that back in if its critical, otherwise we just go off and have fun.

As to speed . . . hmmh.  We pay for a 10000 UL contract, which is meant to be (up to) 10Kbps download.  Having tested on several occasions we have had maximum around 6 or 7.  And today, it's REALLY slow, for no apparent reason and can't get hold of SkyDSL CS so maybe everyone is calling them.

According to our router, monthly download is 45292 MB per month. I have no idea if this is a lot, but shouldn't affect speed according to SKyDSL's terms: 

"Fair-Use-Policy
The Internet access will be provided without a transferred data volume based limitation of transmission speed."

However, re transmission speed, they say:

"Transmission Speed
The Internet access is provided with a transmission
speed of up to 10,240 kbps downstream (satellite
connection in the direction to the customer) and
up to 2,048 kbps upstream (satellite connection in
direction to the internet).
The transmission speed during use, depends
among other things on the network utilization of
the Internet backbone and accordingly on the
utilization of involved maybe technically
subdivided transmission sections, on the
transmission speed of the selected internet server
of the content provider and on the customer
equipment (router, PC including its operating
system and other software used). A certain
transmission speed is not guaranteed.

Duh??  Seems to somewhat confuse their clear no limit fair use policy statement!

So, when I get to speak with them, I'll understand more of why it varies in download speed so much. Still, compared to ISDN, there is no debate, so I'm only quibbling . . .

Lynda