Hi,
I’m interested in buildnig a setup capable of listening to the outernet broadcasts. Are there any dishes/antennas recommended online that I can buy that are known to work well?
If it helps I’m in California, USA, so I’ll be tuning into Galaxy 19.
Thanks,
~Alex
Something as small as a 80 cm dish should work, though larger would be better. The link below has a 120 cm version too, though for shipping purposes the largest you can mail without being freight is about 100 cm.
Dishes: http://sadoun.com/Sat/Order/Dishes/Free-to-air-satellite-dish.htm
For the LNB (the actual antenna), any universal KU-band LNB should work. (http://amzn.com/B00AWHGYVK)
In the US, we have confirmed reception by the 76cm dish that is available on Sadoun. I’ve experimented with 60cm, but it’s pretty flaky.
What about used Dish network dishes? There seems to be a ton of them for sale, but I don’t know if they will work or not.
I have an unused Dish Network satellite dish on my roof and I just purchased Lighthouse. Can I make it work with my satellite dish? What do I need to know? Many thanks in advance.
I am in Northwest Indiana (US) and the dish is facing south west. I will have to find out the dish size.
You can point your dish to Galaxy 19 (97W). See the coverage map at https://wiki.outernet.is/wiki/Coverage_and_transponder_settings
You can use http://satbeams.com/footprints to get the rough idea about your dish size. For your location it is about 80cm. So you can use 90 cm dish (3ft).
http://satbeams.com/footprints?lat=0&lng=0&zoom=1&beam=5786&type=normal&name=Temporary
I have the Dish 1000+ model with dual LNB. The dimensions are 30.9 in in width (78.5 cm) and 23.8 in in height (60.5 cm). The zip code is 46373, BTW.
Are you saying that the dish will have to be re-pointed or is it already pointing in the right direction for my satellite TV reception?
Sorry for the novice questions. Many thanks in advance for your help.
Are you currently receiving TV channels from Galaxy 19? If yes, no need to re-point the dish. If not, you should re-point your dish to Galaxy 19 at 97W.
I finally got around to connecting Lighthouse to my Dishnetwork satellite dish. Used Galaxy 19 with Universal LNB type. Blinking light on Status 2 LED - no signal lock. Tried the other 2 LNB settings - no luck. I also made sure that I’m getting a signal lock on the Dishnetwork receiver.
As it turns out, my Dishnetwork receiver is pointed at Echo Star 72.7 West. Is it possible to use a custom tuner setting to make it work with this Echo Star or does the dish have to be re-positioned? How hard is it to re-position the dish to point at Galaxy 19?
Many thanks in advance.
Actually you can’t receive Outernet data stream from Echo Star satellite. You should point your dish to Galaxy 19 or you can mount a separate dish for Outernet. I think you can buy a good quality dish about 25-30 USD with the mount.
Below are the list of satellites currently broadcasting Outernet data:
Region Transponders
North America Galaxy 19, Eutelsat 113W
Middle America Galaxy 19, Eutelsat 113W
South America Eutelsat 113W
Europe HotBird 13E, Intelsat IS-20
Africa Intelsat IS-20
Middle East HotBird 13E, Intelsat IS-20, AsiaSat 5
Asia (with Russia) AsiaSat 5, ABS-2
Oceania AsiaSat 5I’d rather re-use the existing dish since it’s already mounted on my steep roof. How hard is it to do? Are there instructions? Many thanks in advance.
According to the Zip code I think your location is St John, IN, United States, 41.44°N 87.47°W.
Elevation angle:41.1°
Most probably your dish is an offset one, so use 10 degree less than the calculated 41.1. Use 30 degree as the start point and increase or decrees one by one to get the best signal/quality level.
LNB Tilt (skew):-10.6°
Turn the LNB neck 10.6 degree clockwise.
True azimuth:194.2°
Number of degrees from North. You can use a compass app to find the number of degrees.
Also read this pages:
http://discuss.outernet.is/t/how-to-pick-your-dish-size/1526/3
Just to add my own $.02…
I am in Arizona, USA and can receive G19 just fine with an inexpensive 76 cm dish. But possibly more noteworthy is that I can also receive it reliably with a repurposed DirecTV “Slimline” dish. This is the largest of the DSS dishes, but still small at only 22 inches high by 32 inches wide. While it requires careful aiming, fine “tuning” is facilitated by screw adjustments for both azimuth and elevation. I removed the original monoblock and added a generic mounting bracket and LNB.
EDIT: I should add something I see nobody else has mentioned about repurposing a Dish/DirecTV dish and that is the fact that the original LNB on those dishes is NOT compatible with Outernet (or, for that matter, FTA TV either) because the DirecTV and Dish Network satellites use circular polarization (L/R) while Outernet and FTA use linear polarization (V/H). So if you want to try to use a discarded Dish/DirecTV dish, you’ll need to change the LNB as I did on mine and you can see on the photos.
With this arrangement, I’m able to get 90% signal and 55-65% quality (depending on transponeder) on my TV receiver, and 80% signal, 86% quality, and 90K bitrate on Outernet Lighthouse.
Note the use of a dual LNB - the Lighthouse is connected to one output, and my TV receiver to the other.
Discarded dishes are easy enough to find for free, the bracket was about $6 and a suitable LNB costs between $10 and $20.
So, while I’d recommend a 76cm or larger dish if you can afford it, if you’re on a tight budget, handy, and don’t mind your system being a bit more prone to rain fade, go ahead and experiment a bit, knowing that while it may not be recommended nor officially condoned, it HAS been successfully done.
We’re going to be experimenting with the Winegard 60cm in the coming weeks. I have received reports that the link does close with that size, but only one way to know for sure. The benefit to the 60cm dish is that shipping costs are considerably lower than that of the 76cm.
