Afghanistan W6 Satellite Setup

Read here: instructions on how to find a satellite.

I recommend that you practice first elsewhere, where there is no urgency.

Afghanistan is to the upper left of the map shown here:
Satellite dish pointing in Pakistan  Jalalabad is marked and you can see all the streets, houses, gardens etc.   I have not yet made a page that starts in Afghanistan.

Best regards, Eric.

Thank you for the quick replies. I cannot receive the satellite equipment until I arrive in Afghanistan, but I do have access to DirecTV dish and receiver. I presume the aiming procedures are the same for a TV system as they are for a data connection. I plan to aim the dish at different satellites and eventually come back to the original satellite to confirm my capabilities. Do you think this will provide enough experience to help aim the data connection?

I have a digital satellite meter now to help me with the installation process. The only problem is that it needs some information for the satellite I'm trying to locate.

LO Frequency
Downstream Frequency
Symbol Rate
LNB Voltage (13v/18v)
Satellite Longitude

Whenever I search for the information I receive different numbers. Does anyone know the frequencies and symbol rate that I need to use for Eutelsat W6?

Hi
Just to let you know that now a days its snow Falling and in the Summer there is too much wind so you should find the Dish and other thing accordingly .

Thanks
Jani

If your receive QPSK-BER is at or lower than 0.00010 then you have a good download receive signal and will have no errors at all in your received data after FEC.  You will see that the number of uncorrected errors after FEC, hardly increases at all (I hope!).

You need to get the hub to measure your transmit signal as it received at the hub and resolve any issues.  The hub can adjust your transmit power up and down.   If the level is still too low you may be asked to check your dish.  The satellite needs to be at the centre of the beam (i.e. half way between equally degraded levels on either side).   The dish rim needs to be flat.  Use fishing line or thread up down and across the middle and check for just touching.

The hub need to know your lat and long so that your transmit bursts arrive at the satellite at the correct time.  If you, or any other site, have the wrong burst timing then your transmit bursts may mutually overlap and both will fail.

The hub can also observe and investigate any interference problem.

There may well be traffic or routing problems.  Traffic or routing problems need to be investigated and resolved by IT people at the hub.  Bentley Walker need your help.  Tell them you have traffic problems and describe the symptoms.

Best regards, Eric.

In respect of LinkStar modems the QPSK BER which people measure during pointing varies from about 0.01 which is poor to 0.00001 which is excellent.  The QPSK BER refers to the situation prior to the application of FEC.  Values in the range 0.0001 to 0.00001 are normal and good.

The corresponding BER rates after FEC are like <1E-9 or zero counts in any reasonable amount of measuring time, even at 54 Mbit/s.  Sometime you get zero errors in a whole day.  See the cumulative uncorrected error count.

With a receive QPSK BER of 0.0001 to 0.00001 there will be virtually no errors at all in the data and no effect on the service.

What is worth noting is that a good enough receive perfomance does not necessarily mean that the antenna is centred on the satellite as various random readings will be displayed wherever you point the antenna across the fairly flat central 0.5 dB beamwidth.

This problem of installers being unable to find the beam centre is particularly evident when the satellite downlink carrier is very strong and the customer dishes rather large.   I do wish sometimes that a very weak carrier was available for pointing so as to make is difficult to find the satellite, that way the installers would be forced to point accurately.   It is so easy to say I've got a really good signal and then just give up the effort. Transmit beams are narrower than receive beams.

It is thus important, when pointing an antenna to move off in each direction till a significantly degraded and identical degraded level is determined either side of the beam, like 0.01, and then count equal numbers of flats in on both nuts, or whatever, till you centre the beam by mechanical movement.

I doubt that the service is 10 users on a dedicated 2048/512 connection as that would be costing them around $17,500 per month.  It is more likely that they are on a shared tariff at a very much lower monthly price.  Dedicated service of 2048/512 would suit a site with 200 PC users.

Regarding BUC power I wondered about this also.  This should be resolved when the hub measures the carrier from the site to the hub and determines if it is sufficient for 512k operation.  If not, I would suggest checking the dish pointing and the dish rim for possible distortion.  More BUC watts may help but let's see first what the hub measures.

If all the 'radio' aspects prove to be clear then the problem is in the traffic / routing / congestion area, but this won't get cleared by magic, the site needs to report the symptoms to the hub so they can investigate.

Best regards, Eric.