DirecWay Dish Problems in Iraq

Hello All,

I recently was given a Hughes/Direcway VSAT system,  which the original owner said it worked for him here in Iraq. Once everything was set back up, I went with a new provider, programmed the DW6000 modem per provider instructions. Everything was looking good to go until aiming the dish. The signal strength will not go past 10-12 no matter where the dish is aimed.

A few VSAT techs came to the scene, replaced the coax cables, hooked up a sat finder tool, spectrum analyzer etc.... reaimed, adjusted the polarization but got nothing from the dish. Each one told me the dish is picking up a little noise and that's it.

So now what do I do? I've provided a few links of what my dish looks like. I'm told the LNB could be bad or the whole nose piece?

What should I replace first?
Can someone out there supply me with the parts I need with prices?

Edited by forum admin:
Six image links were here, now broken..
darkgarrison.org/dish1.jpg to dish6.jpg

I hope these pics help identify the type of dish parts I need.

philipg

well, the most crucial thing I can see here is that the basement of the dish is not really good, as mentioned by Greg.
I also think it is a good thing to make sure you have a good line of sight to the satellite.

LNB can get broken, sure. When the installers connected to satfinder to it, could they identify that the level of noise got higher or it just stayed the same?

Good Luck,
Nimrod

Hello,

Thanks for the reply. The base for the dish you see appears to be very common atleast in the area I am in. I've compared my setup with many other Vsats in the area. I usually have more sandbags on the base however, during the dish aiming by the Vsat techs, they had to remove a few. The NSS6 satellite is very low on the horizon as the techs pointed out at 110 degree azimuth.

With the sat finder gear attached, it appeared the signal never changed no matter where they pointed the dish.

Hope this clarified a few things.

PhilipG


Quote:

Hello,

Thanks for the great info. The dish in the pic isn't currently setup to aim at the nss6 satelite. I observed the vsat techs adjust the azimuth, polarisation etc. from the info obtained from the the satsig website dish pointing area, looking for the NSS6. When they failed to get a signal strength over 10-12, they begain to swing the dish by hand thus moving for a signal in any direction. They left the dish in it's current setting to extract numbers off the parts to go do some research they told me.


Just doing some research on my own to see the possibility of bad parts. I can put the dish back in it's regular position how they had it originaly, take few more pics and can post here.

philipg

Phil - if your still monitoring this thread, drop me a private message.  I've got a team of contractors in SWA right now running around theatre tuning up systems on a gov't contract, but we always try to help out the troops when we can.  If they're anywhere near your FOB, I'll tell them to stop in and fix you up - they've got a full load of parts w/ them.

Ex

Dear All

Feel free to visit our website
https://www.wafa.ae

to Help and Support and DW6000s, 4020s, and/or DW7000

regards

[quote author=schroec link=1176201460/0#11 date=1192097155]To check if the LNB is working, with the Transmitter disconnected and the sat finder connected to the receiver (LNB), if you move your hand in front of the horn, it should drop the level on the meter. If there is no change, purchase a new LNB.[/quote]

Putting your hand over the feed horn will cause the sat finder level to drop ONLY if the antenna is already pointed at a satellite and already receiving a downlink signal. The satellite signal is blocked and so less power is received.

If the antenna is not pointed at a satellite and is pointed at the cold sky away from any satellite then putting your hand over the feed horn will cause the sat finder level to increase. When aimed at the blank sky, the LNB is then listening to the very cold, low level 'big bang', background deep space noise which is negligible. The sat finder measures the noise from the LNB itself, which is proportional to its noise temperature. (say 65 deg Kelvin). If you put your warm hand over the horn the thermal noise of your hand (temperature = 290 deg Kelvin) adds to the LNB noise temperature and the sat finder gives a larger reading. The same applies if you point the antenna down at the trees, the ground or into a torrential rain storm of water droplets at 280 deg Kelvin. The sun, at 10000 degrees Kelvin, will give a big reading.

Best regards, Eric.