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Monthly Archives: January 2020
New Fransat Satellite Now in Service
Currently the old (Eutelsat 5wA ) and the new (5B ) are in position and work has commenced to transfer transmission over to the new satellite
Commissioning will begin in January and continue for several months.
For most customers in the South of England and Wales no adjustment of decoder, frequency or dish should be necessary. Once in place and transmitting, the transponders will be optimised and reception should continue without interruption.
The new satellite has a different footprint and this was not expected, The problem is due to a fault, on deployment one of the solar panels failed, consequently the power available will only be 45% of the required level. The new satellite will however continue in use and is expected to have its full satellite life-span. Viewers of Fransat in Portugal, Spain and North UK are affected. Details from Telesatellite.com website
As can be clearly seen above the new satellite does not have the same coverage as the old one
If you live above latitude 53.2 ( Sheffield / Manchester /Liverpool, you may have a much reduced signal on Fransat and may require a bigger dish
Customers in Scotland would be advised to change to TNT on Astra 1 satellite.
This change was unexpected and data does not yet exist to determine the exact size of dish that will be required. Please email me for advice before ordering.
What Can be Done if you are Affected?
If you ONLY have Fransat, you can change the dish for a larger one.
If you have a parabolic ( normal standard type ) dish , with multiple lnbs, you may have to go one or two sizes bigger, to regain the signal
If you have the Force Frontier Toroidal dish or Wave Frontier version it will be simpler to change your receiver to TNT.
In Scotland I have yet to test the signal, but it is doubtful whether the new dish size , would be acceptable in a domestic situation, planning permission may also be required.
Scottish borders: Similarly the dish size may be increased .
Change to TNT:
If you currently have JUST Fransat and single lnb Fransat dish – it should be relatively easy to move the dish to receive TNT
If you are using a Technisat receiver and change to a TNT box the process would unfortunately lose the many advantages of that receiver, in terms of easy channel editing. But, picture quality and card costs are very similar once installed.
If you have a Multi-satellite dish which includes Astra 1 ( most of mine do ) then you should easily be able to integrate the new TNT box.
In all cases when replacing Fransat with TNT on a multi-sat dish, the ORDER of the lnb switch ports will need to be changed.
Please email me with full details of your system and i’ll advise and quote for changes.