SatSig topic:

HX50 duel 2000

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Apr 4^th, 2011 at 7:58am

long story short within the last two weeks we have spent many hours getting our two dishes dialed in. One dish is transmitting and receaving but we are locked out of the modem and cannot access it. The other dish is receiving but has a low transmission signal. We have been awaiting contact with our provider but communication has stopped it has been 4 days and we are still not on line. We are getting RX code 5 and TX code 8 on both dishes. Also it appears that our IP has disapeared on our supposed good dish ,we are at a loss and very furstrated. Seems we tackled the hardest part and that was finding the bird on both dishes.
Any help on what to do next would be most greatfull.
32 Joes awaiting internet its geeting ugly.

Apr 4^th, 2011 at 8:27am

Regarding locked out of modem.

Once the modem is up and working, the IP address of the gateway and subnet mask applicable to the LAN connector changes to those given in the configuration sheet from your service provider, so you need to change the network interface details on your router or PC or whatever is connected to the modem.

The first step is to be able to ping from a PC, directly connected, to the HX modem.

If you send me (eric@satsig.net) copies of your configurations sheets (pdfs) I can talk to Bentley Walker about your sites and get them to check them out from this end.

Best regards, Eric.

Apr 4^th, 2011 at 8:50am

Thank you for the prompt response Eric. We have already confirmed this already but will recheck on our end. and will forward to you our config screen shots, perhaps there is something we are not seeing. Also if this helps we have had Greg looking into this matter as well for us. But he believes our provider may have us locked out, we are pursuing that on our end after some E-mails this morning they have finally contacted us. I think if we can get all parties on the same page this issue can be resolved.

Apr 4^th, 2011 at 2:28pm

Many thanks for the screen shots from your HX50 modem. I am pleased to see that you can communicate with the modem.

Your receive quality is 91, which is typical. What matters however is if 91 is the exact best you can get.

I have spoken with Bentley Walker and they have diagnosed that your transmit level is very low.

Power off at the mains wall switch before working on the coax cables.

Possible causes of your low level transmit are:

1. Transmit coax cable is faulty, causing a low level transmit signal into the transmit module or low DC power supply voltage into the transmit module.
Inspect the cable for damage - is it crushed with the braid sheath exposed and suffering water corrosion ?
Inspect the two F connectors. The centre wire pin must be bright shiny copper and stick out about 1.5mm proud of the rim of the plug. When screwed in, the point of the pin must actually go smoothly into the hole and not 'push back' the cable within the plug outer. The braid must make good contact to the plug outer at both ends. Tighten the plugs using firm finger force only - not using a wrench !
If the braid is not making good contact at one end the DC power current may be attempting to come back via the LNB cable sheath. This will cause strange and low power problems.
You could try swapping over the transmit and receive cables at both ends, but be careful not to misconnect the LNB to the modem TX or vice versa.

2. Dish mispointing may be the problem. The receive beam is broader than the transmit beam and given that the top of the beam is rather rounded and the readout varies +/- 1 all the time, it is difficult to be sure you have got the satellite in the centre of the receive beam.
In azimuth, loosen the two nuts by about two turns and gently swing the dish to rest against either nut alternately. Repeat this several times recording the degraded signal quality (e.g. 74). Adjust one nut till the degraded level at each nut is identical (e.g. 74 and 74). Then put the azimuth slider in the middle and tighten each nut in by exactly the same number of flats. 6 flats = 1 turn.
In elevation, mark one flat with a felt tip pen and wind the dish across the beam peak and count the turns and flats between two equal degraded levels. Wind back to the centre by counting flats. This is easy as the weight of the dish stops any backlash. If you tighten the big centre bolt down you will need to redo the elevation peaking up.

3. The transmit module may be assembled wrong (90 deg error) to the OMT assembly. The rectangular waveguide apertures must line up and not be crossed over. If there is a square gasket here, the rectangular aperture in the gasket must line up and not be crossed over. It is very easy to get the gasket wrong.

A picture of your feed assembly might help.

Best regards, Eric

Apr 5^th, 2011 at 4:22am

Eric, very nice, havent seen these troubleshoots in other HX50 post. I will try this on our second dish today I ran out of time last nite working with it, It was very windy yesterday and was only able to get 90 signal strength however our RX and TX code did change to 5 and 8 finaly.

Just want to post in case others come across the same issue when having problems with their modums during commissioning. After reaching our provider we figured out the missing IP and were giving different vaules to try within the modum config DSN,IP ECT.. however and we feel pretty silly about this the biggest issue was we were on static and not dynamic huge but easy fix. Hopefully this helps others and hope to get our second dish running today barring we conquer the low transmit issue I fear Ill be moving my dish again yikes!

respectfully, 32 Joes surfing the net