One that you find on the side of the road.lol

Hi Snap1945;

                   I too have the Vast set up for my television reception while we are traveling and what i have used for the dish is a second hand old Austar dish and lmb that i picked up from the local tip where i live. Total cost $5.00, and all good. The satilight that we use for our Vast receiption is the same one that Austar use for there pay television.

I did replace the lmb after 18 months as the original ( a very early sharp lmb ) failed. A new lmb cost me $ 20.00 trade. Some people will say that that size dish will not work in the Northern states as it is just a bit to small. Earlyer this year we traveled from home to Darwin and never had a problem seting up the dish at our camp sit.

$5.00 compaired to what some of the retailers want ( $100's ) for a dish and lmb.

One thing that you will need is some form of trypod to mount the dish so as to sit your set up at ground level. On a nother note i have seen one or two caravans use a jocky wheel mount to hold a lenght of 2.25" pipe to mount the dish that way. I find that useing the trypod method work the best for me.

HI valiant81

WHAT ELSE WOULD I NEED BESIDES THE DISH AND CAN  I USE VAST JUST FOR SAY 6 MONTHS TRIPS

CHEERS SNAP

Hi Snap1946;

                   Ok, Yes the Vast set up for people in caravan's, the registration has to be renewed every 6 months. Has your receiver been registed yet??. It will not pick up the comercial channels until it is!. It does not cost money to resister or to re-register.

So were to start. i would think you have your vast receiver set up. Can you receive channel 800. IF NOT do not go any further until you do !!! This is the most important thing for new people setting up for the first time. It pointless going any futher. The vast receiver needs to be pointed at the correct satilight to be able to receive this imformation and once you can get channel 800 the rest is easy (registration ).

Hi Snap1946;

                   Ok i will take it from the top, what you need to be able to get television receiption while youn are traveling.......

1/ A receiver capable of picking up the Vast service, I use the UEC brand as it was the first one on the market at the time and there are now other brands starting to appear now. And one other thing, what ever you do, get a receiver that is capable of running off 12 Volts DC, and i think that these type of receivers also come with a 240 Volt to 12 Volt power supply.

2/ A satilight dish and LMB. The LMB down convertes the signal that is received by the dish to a lower frequency that the receiver can work with, after the down conversion the frequency is in the order of about 1200 Mhz and at the frequency this is why your coax cable and connections are so important.

3/ Some type of stand,i use a trypod type that folds up and lives in the boot of the caravan. 

4/ 20 odd Meters of good qality coax cable  ( RG6 quad cable ) and i short lead made out of the same coax cable and fittings that will connect on to your LMB on the dish. And one coax cable joiner, buy a couple incase you lose one!!

5/ Some type of satilight meter and this you can spend anywere from under $100.00 to several $1000's. The one that i use in my job cost about $2500 and works real well and is a bit of a over kill, BUT all you would need is a basic one and one that would cost about $120.00. Do not buy the $60.00 'special'.

6/ A good compass, some thing a lot better than the one that comes with your meter.

7/ I do use a HDMI lead to take the signal from my Vast receiver to the television, easy one type of connection that has the best high quality transfer from equipment pluged in to your television. Or you could use the old and trusted way of the red & white ( audio ) and yellow ( video ) leads that have been around since the year dot.

8/ The television..... there are some good brands and some rubbish one, If you are happy with the set that you have , use that, providing that your set can also run on 12 volts. Hope fully your set has at leased one HDMI input, ( HDMI = High, Difinision, Muiltymedia, Interface )

Now power reqirments .....And this is important if you are going to free camp

How big is your house battery ( AH's ) just because the televion will pull about 4~5 Amps + the set top box would pull and this is a guess, about 2 Amps. Then there are all of the other things that you would have around your caravan, lighting and hopefully led lighting, water pump and any thing else that you may have in your caravan that runs off 12 Volts. Voltage drop can be a big issue.

I would suggest that a 50mm dish would be far to small. We were told a minimum of 85cm that is 850 mm as a minimum. Smaller dishes, 65cm, are too hard to locate the satellite and more so the further north you go. As a complete set up you need 

1. The dish, having something to cover and protect it when travelling is a good idea. We had a bag made from the canvas maker in Albany.

2. A stand. Try and get a tripod style not the triangle style. The stand needs to be exactly vertical. Good ones have a small bubble to get it right.

3. A set top box. Needs to be registered, free, every 6 months and when you change states. Just ring them and it is basically done while on the phone.

4. Cable from the dish to the box. Some people put a connector to go between the box and your van/MH and van/MH to the dish. Much easier.

5. Not 100% necessary, but a satellite locater device. When setting up emits a loud beep when you are on a satellite. There are 3, you need the middle one.

We purchased ours from Albany TV, we have no affiliation at all with them but Neil was so helpful. Cost $650 and reception is great wherever we have been.

Just be careful of the $199 ads. They are a smaller dish made from thickened tinfoil and do NOT come with the set top box, that is what makes it go. Apparently their after service leaves a lot to be desired. Good luck. Worth the money but hasten slowly with your decision.

hako wrote:

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Apologies for this dumb question which I repeat again, but what is a "lmb" mentioned by valiant81 please. I've Googled it and I won't be so crude as to repeat what Google says it stands for on this forum, but there must be another meaning....please.
Regards

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 The LMB is a typo, it should be LNB which stands for Low Noise Block Downconverter.

Edit.. Looks like i just got pipped at the post on that one.

Hi all;

       Have trouble seting up your dish using the smaller dishes that have flooded the market are a problem to set up useing the little meters that a lot of retailers sell. Problem is that to find the satilight in the first place you need to first set your dish to the correct cordinants ( how far off North, the elevation and finaly the skew adjustment ). Get one of these wrong and no service or at best a service that will drop out or freeze for no aparent reason. A biger dish does make it easyer to find the correct satilight, but half the problem is geting to know were to point the dish and know what the cordinants mean and the one adjustment that a lot of people miss out on is the skew. Even with a good signal and your satilight receiver set up and telling you that you have X amount of channels, IF the skew is NOT set up incorrectly you will still not get the signal that the Vast receiver will be able to decode.

If you google Vast cordinants or vast set up, there is a site that has all of the cordinants for every state in  Australia.

As i have said befor i use a old Austar dish both for the caravan and also have a second dish on the roof of my house that is used for when the caravan is at home so as the UEC box can recieve it's up dates. Yes my caravan is pluged into the power 24/7, one for the house battery to be charged by the built in smart charger and second even with the satilight box turned off but still will display the time. I do not have a problem,even after 2 odd years like this. So that is my set up both on the road and also at home. Both of these dishes are 65 cm and are used all over Australia.

Now the cheaper meters that used are just that, cheap and nasty, yes they will work to a point, but can be very deaf or selectivity is poor and as Australia has 3 satilights that are very close to gether and these cheaper meters can not tell the differance between the satilights, and only one satilight has the signal that we are looking for. Is it any wonder that a lot of people are having trouble. That and poor qality coax cable

In may of this year the wife and my self took a unplaned ( long story ) holiday and traveled up to Darwin and we free camped along the way and the Devil's Marbils comes to mind. We even stayed at Daily waters and were siting down to a quiet beer when there was a knock at the door and a nother caravana asked if we had television, yes and not a problem, but he was, and asked for my help. Thank god i had my tools with me, including my antenna gear.

Any way after a few minuites with his meter i could not find the signal and this bloke was useing a 85 cm dish, whent and got the little meter that i keep in the caravan for my own set up, any way found the requirded signal, did a default and retune and oner happy customer repayed use with a couple of coldy's at tea time.

The satilight meter that i use with my work is a Uniohm satilight meter and worth about $2500.00 and has to be sent off evey 12 months for recalabration.This meter is used every day, but it is my bread and butter and would be totaly lost with out it. BUT the little meter that i have in my caravan is a Labgear SQ702 and cost me about $120.00 and this little meter can be programed for the satilights in our hemisphere. When traveling i do leave the uniohm meter home.

So the best advise i can give you is to practice at home seting up you dish, try several times and finaly it all will slip into place and you will hopefully get good at setting your system up. What ever you do, do not panic, life is to short. Take a breath and remember the satilight that we try and find is quiet small and trying to find it can be a bit of a ordeal at first, SMALL and CARFULL ajustments are the way to go, so take it easy take a break, have a coffee / tea or even a beer if you feel like it. Just remember...slowly,slowly catch the worm.

HI Ontos45;

                Great news about getting your new satilight receiver. With your new receiver you will also need to replace the LNB on your dish with a duel feed model. This is so you can record one channel and watch a totaly different channel, so you will need to run a second coax cable from your LNB to your receiver.

Might as well put my thoughts in on this subject. Last year we bought from SaPlus a digital Satellite Finder model SF 3239. 

It makes the  job of alining the dish so easy by being pretuned to the Optus C1 satellite. Once you get used to using it it will take all the frustration out of the job. I can now get the dish set usually in about 1 to 2 min with not hassles at all. By the way in am in no way connected with the company, just a satisfied customer. 

briche