What did you use to align the dish ? If just a simple meter you are possibly not even pointing at 28.2E. One cable is fine.

Goto http://www.dishpointer.com. Select 28.2E and enter your postcode. Zoom in on the Google Earth view and drag the marker to your dish position. The line indicates the exact direction to 28.2 E. Look for point you can see, mine is the end of my neighbours gable end. Look at the elevation on the table and if your dish has a elevation scale set it to that. You should now hopefully get a bleep from your meter. Back off the gain and make tiny adjustments to the direction and elevation to try and get a signal with the gain as low as possible. That should be good enough to give you a basic lock on 28.2E. Once you have it working you need to fine tune the alignment. Post when you actually have a signal I will tell you how to fine tune the dish alignment.

The satellite group you are trying to align on is 22000mls above the equator, the tiniest error will miss them by many miles.

grahamlthompson – 1 day ago  » 

Jaco – 3 hours ago  » 

Hello @Polellensa1946 and @grahamlthompson

Many thanks for your advices

I have bought a satellite meter, and that helped me a lot to aim properly.

FIrst I came across Astra 5B, and then I found 10 degrees or so lower Eutelsat 28B

and luckily the Freesat got a signal.

THen I have adjusted the skew of the LNB to get proper signal, and also, I had to adjust the positionning of the head for the two LNBs to get the max signal.

85cm dish, Double shielding cable, Technomate head, I have put all the chances my side to get a distant (!) satellite.

Only downside now with the Freesat box is not being able to get the replay functions, since I am not located in the UK

Anyway thanks for your help !

A bit confused about your distant sattelite observation.

All satellites you can view with a fixed dish, are approximately 22000 mls above the equator and orbit the Earth in the same directon as the Earth rotates, and at that height to stay in orbit the forces that tends to tend to push the satellite into outer space are balanced by the Earths gravity. As a result they appear not to move from a any point on the Earth from which they are visible. The closest satellites from where you are are. are exactly due South and as result will be the highest elevation geostationary satellites you could receive.

All the UK channels come from a group of satellites that are exactly over the Equator at 28.2 or so East of the Greenwich meridian. So give or take a few Km of over 22000 mls are virtually identical distances.

As to your issue with with UK IP catch up services you should check upon smart DNS service providers who can intercept your request your internet access to to a UK catch up provider and replace your local IP address with a UK based one,

(Keeping it simple)

There is no height where forces that tend to push a satellite into outer space are balanced by the Earths gravity. The speed of a satellite is a direct consequence of its height/altitude, lowering altitude increases speed, increasing altitude decreases speed. Get the altitude correct and a satellites orbit will be geostationary.

There aren’t any forces pushing a satellite into outer space, so there can be no balance between those forces and earths gravity. Once a satellite is in its desired orbit there is only one force acting on it and that is gravity.

Satellite are just projectiles, slightly more complex than throwing a rock but the physics are the same.

Reffub – 1 hour ago  » 

There aren’t any forces pushing a satellite into outer space, so there can be no balance between those forces and earths gravity. Once a satellite is in its desired orbit there is only one force acting on it and that is gravity.

Satellite are just projectiles, slightly more complex than throwing a rock but the physics are the same.

If there was only one force acting on a satellite and that was gravity it would very soon come back to earth.

It needs a counter force to keep it from falling.

grahamlthompson – 2 hours ago  » 

aldaweb – 48 minutes ago  » 

Reffub – 1 hour ago  » 

There aren’t any forces pushing a satellite into outer space, so there can be no balance between those forces and earths gravity. Once a satellite is in its desired orbit there is only one force acting on it and that is gravity.

Satellite are just projectiles, slightly more complex than throwing a rock but the physics are the same.

If there was only one force acting on a satellite and that was gravity it would very soon come back to earth.

It needs a counter force to keep it from falling.

Indeed. Stand a bottle of water on the floor of a car, get someone to hold the bottle while you accelerate to 30mph. Drive at a steady 30mph along a straight road and let go the bottle. It stands up as gravity is holding it down, now go round a corner at the same speed it falls over (the same force that tries to push an orbiting satellite out into space)

For the sake of argument aldaweb is right stable satellites in orbit are constantly falling back towards earth they just don’t hit Earth. (More on that later)

Things come into motion because a force is acting upon them, a rocket carrying a satellite into space for example. Once that satellite is in orbit it is going fast enough to NOT fall back to earth, there is no need for any other force to act upon it apart from gravity. (Yes Graham pointed out photons can exert a tiny force, but do we really need to worry about that ?)

If it was possible to throw a stone fast enough it would go into orbit, plenty of large stone like objects and water ice have orbited in space for billions of years, Saturn’s rings for example. There is no counter force holding them all in orbit, seriously does anyone really think inertia can not counteract gravity for billions of years ?

Reffub – 1 hour ago  » 

Quote:

Because the object in orbit is no longer continuing in a straight line, it’s inertia generates a force that tries to move the satellite out towards space. When the downward force from gravity balances the outward inertial force the object is then in a stable orbit.

It seems like your describing a kind of centrifugal force, when actually it is centripetal force supplied by gravity that stops a satellite following its inertia and going off into space. Yes centripetal is another force but it is still just gravity. As I said before satellites are constantly falling back towards earth.

If I might para phrase a website….. once a satellite is launched it will fall towards the Earth with a trajectory which matches the curvature of the Earth. It will fall around the Earth, always accelerating towards it under the influence of gravity, yet never colliding into it since the Earth is constantly curving at the same rate.

As I said before you are simply trotting out the same information you have read without fundamentally understanding it. The fundamental principle on which the maths is based on is, if an object in orbit is staying at the same altitude there must be two forces in equilibrium, as you say the object is falling at the same time as it is rising. You totally ignore why this is so, even that both are exactly the same principle. Gravity is one force, the other is derived from the velocity od the moving object. it mass and the deviation from a straight line. A moving object with any mass deviated from it’s path by an external force generates an opposite force, the trick here is that the two have to be exactly equal and opposite.

As you have already stated within the limits of the Earths gravitational pull that will normally adjust the altitude to compensate and hence the orbital period. Apply enough force to increase the velocity (required to change the velocity) to a level where the velocity becomes too large the object breaks free from the Earths Gravity and heads off into outer space, do it the opposite way the object descends to a level where it hits the atmosphere and falls out of orbit.

Slingshotting a space vehicle to the outer limits of the Solar System utilises this in a big way. By subtly adjusting the object track you can gain a massive increase in velocity by utilising the gravity pull of the planets (Incidentally Gravity is the weakest known force in the Universe). The principles that Newton developed in the fundamental laws of motion are way stronger.

Why do you think the bottle falls over, according to you the only force is gravity which is pulling straight down on the bottle ? Turning the car wheels to turn left or right generates a force because the bottle no longer travels in a straight line (just like the satellite) that cause the bottle to fall over. Where did this come from ?

If it wasn’t for friction and air resistance an object on the ground on a flat surface would behave the same way. Introducing a gradient has the same effect of deviation from a straight line.

Imagine an object in deep space travelling at a specific velocity in a straight line and you produce thrust from a rocket thruster directly opposite to the direction it’s travelling in. There is only one force directly applied, does it stop dead or even reverse, of course it does not. According to your weird ideas it should. Why not ?