No signal in France

LAGMonkey

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Me and my old man have been tareing out hair out (less for him as he has significantly less :D ) at trying to get the BBC out in Normandy via the sky sat.

Weve got our old Amstrad DRX300 out from the loft and shipped it over to france with the sky mini-dish and some cable but we still cant recieve anything. Absolutly nothing comes down and when told to the box cant see any sats.

We have an approx position for Astra2 and we were assuming that we would be able to get some sort of signal on the signal test so that we could home in on an optimum.
This, however, hasnt happened.

So onto my question, Would we be correct in assuming that the Box's tuner is dead? The cable has continuity and weve even borrowed a second LNB but the problem still presists?
Was my assumption that we could get the BBC without a viewing card correct? and is sky able to kill a digi-box if it hasnt been connected to a sat dish for a few years?
 
yes m8 BBC 1 is fta so is viewablw without card. it might just be slightly out of posistion,remember as a few degrees out on the ground will be thousands of miles out in space;)
 
How long should it take for a signal to be aquired if i may be so bold?
Is it a case of immediatly or do we have to leave the sat in a single position for say 40 seconds before it realises and we get some vestage of signal on the Amstrad sat box?

As i said, i would have thought that i would get SOME signal even if it was pointed in roughtly the right direction and then i would be able to hone in on a better signal using the Sat box's singal strength meter.

Thanks for the fast reply tho :D
 
I reckon you would do well to buy a satellite finder from maplin or somewhere to point your dish in exactly the right position in the sky. You can buy SD sky boxes off ebay for literally 20 quid too if you reckon your tuner is dead.
 
u would normally get a signal straight away m8. but the dish has to be pointing in exactly the right direction.

i would by a satellte meter and get ur signal with that first,then when u plug in the box and theres still nothing then u know theres a fault with either the box or coax cable running to it m8
 
also make sure that your coax does not have a short or break in it.
 
BBC channels have a tighter footprint on the uk as they are free to air and the signal is weaker than most of the other channels of the same sattelites in same position.This should not stop you being able to pick up the other channels and get something on the signal meter however the amstrad digibox is renown for a tuner fault,2 surface mount capacitors need to be replaced,try it on a known working dish to discount this problem.
 
yes id say def need a big dish id say 1 meter min
 
You should rely only need at most 80cm dish but 1m would be very capable ov reciving sky 28.2% east.the spread pattern ov the beam should be very strong into france uk itself is not that much stronger.
 
Ah but its normadie region so after hunting arround various websites (thanks to google) me and my fater came to the conclusion that the sky-mini should be able to pick up the signal. Coax cable is good.
 
I use a standard sky dish in southern brittany works fine,all channels.The only problem i had was tall trees!But thats sorted now.What was the outcome?Have you got any channels?
 
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well i havent been back there just yet but thats going to happen next month. Im going to get a second sky box (one i know that works) and transport that over so i can have a play. Weve got the second LNB so there is a lot to play with. Might just have to get one of those "freeview" cards from sky tho as i heard that all the free stuff still had some sort of encryption on them
 
The 'freesat' card is only required for channel 4 & channel 5 (and I think you get sky 3 as well) - all the other freebies (bbc / itv) require no card at all
 
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