How to for true FTA channels.
How to for true FTA channels.
First is to go to a site like Lyngsat.com or Satbeams.com and look for the free channels you want to view and what satellite they are on, 90% are on what are called linear satellites..
There are lots of satellites with free channels on them but trying to get them all on one satellite dish may prove to be too difficult for some.
The first thing you are going to need is a good dish, a larger dish then to one your currently using for Dish or BEV (if you are) is needed to view these satellites as they are lower power then the ones Dish and BEV use, they also need a different LNB then the Dish and BEV satellites, the Dish and BEV satellites are circular polarized, the FTA satellites are linear.
A 39” to 48” dish is a good start, also a good low noise floor linear LNB is required, most start at .4 dB the better ones can go as low as .1 dB, the type of dish you use depends on how many satellites you need to receive, a round dish is called a prime focus dish as most of the signal is directed to one point, this is where a single LNB would be centered, other LNB’s could be used but it would be best to get an elliptical dish as it would provide more signal to a lager spread of LNB’s.
Most elliptical are 24 x 36 inches for linear satellites, some can hold as many as 5 LNB’s, there are others that can use more LNB’s, the better ones are the T55 and T90, these are very large and required special LNB’s to work.
Another way to go is with a motorized system, this would use 1 round dish around 39” to 48” depending on the motors spec’s as to what it can handle, also your location would determines the size of dish your going to use, the further North you are the larger the dish will have to be
With a motorized system you can pan the entire belt of satellites visible at your location, a good LNB for this application would be one that has both circular and linear capabilities.
With a 4 input DiSEqC switch you could use 4 dishes with a single LNB on each, this would give you the best setup as you can individually focus each dish on a single satellite for maximum gain on that bird, if you have more then 1 receiver a second switch could be used as most LNB’s have 2 or more outputs, 3 or more receivers would require the use of a 4X4 switch, there are many different types and brands of switches out there, we can look at that later.
So now you have decided on the satellite(s) you want to watch and the types of switches (if needed) and other hardware your going to use you then need to find that satellite, there are several good satellite location web sites out there, one is dishpointer.com, using that site and finding the bird you want is not that hard if you follow the directions posted for your location.
Setting up the receiver for that satellite is the next step, as there are many different brands of revivers out there it would be impossible to describe the setups for all, so a generic way is to look at LyngSat for a transponder with an active free channel on it, these are marked with an FTA in the channel listing.
To help with this you can ask on this site and someone would be glad to tell you what active channels are on that bird, setup help for your receiver is also available
