Set up help for a beginner

[reamon]

Some explanations to a beginner would be most appreciated. My present set up is, a 60 cm dish and a quad lnb getting Astra 28.2 E. I have a Humax freesat box taking 2 of the feeds and also a VU+ solo taking another , and then the last feed is going to a Sagem freesat reciever in a spare room.
I am thinking of changing to a 90 cm dish with 3 lnbs getting 28.2 E 19.2 E and 13E. Now I understand I need a diseqc as well, which I gather is a sort of switch.
What I'm confused about is.
1.Will the 3 lnbs need to be dual or quad. ie. The Humax needs two inputs, how could this be managed ?
2.Looking at these diseqc switches, it seems that there is several inputs to take the feed from each lnb and then one ouput which is to go to the receiver, but at present I need 2 for the Humax, 1 for the VU+ solo, and 1 for the Sagem.
Sorry if I'm not making much sense, basically I guess I need to know how I'm going to get the same receiver setup that I have at the moment, when I change to the bigger dish and 3 lnbs.

[echelon]

ok , well lets assume you had the bigger dish , and a 4 way diseqc switch as well , for the vu+ solo

to start with you would fit a quad lnb on the 28 east position , to get you the same as you do now , and the cables would stay the same EXCEPT for the vu+ solo cable which would be removed and go to say lnb input 3 or C of the diseqc switch , and then the common cable down to the vu+ from the common point of the switch

you would then cable from the astra 1 19e lnb to input 1 or A of the switch , and also cable from the hotbird 13e lnb to input 2 or B of the switch

input 4 or D of the switch would not be in use at the moment as you only get 3 satellites from the above , D would go to a fourth sat if you had one to use ( a 4th lnb )

so in simple terms , 3 of the 4 cables from the quad lnb on 28e feed the humax and sagem freesat receivers exactly the same as they do now

then you cable the 4th coax from the vu+ into the diseqc switch common output , behind or under the dish , and you have 3 cables from A B C of the diseqc switch to Astra 1 , Hotbird and Astra 2

lastly , you enable simple 4 lnb mode in the vu+ and use the first 3 of A B C ( not D ) to let the vu+ solo switch between the 3 satellites , as it tells the switch which lnb input to use

the vu+ then switches the diseqc switch to the correct lnb and you get the channels from that chosen satellite

so the vu+ settings are what control the switch

the switch then switches to the correct lnb from the choice of 3 available

the lnb is focussed onto the correct satellite , and so you get the correct channels from that satellite

lastly , the 28e astra 2 lnb has to be at least a quad , same as it is now , or could be an octo if you needed even more outputs

the 13e and 19e lnb,s can be single output if only 1 feed is required from each , but can be twin or quads leaving you with spare feeds if required at some point

so in simple terms you need 2 single output lnb,s and 1 quad lnb

you could even keep the existing dish and quad on 28e and add another dish to get 13e and 19e only ( or maybe add 4.8e , 10e or 16e as well to give 3 sats from that dish )

[johnhenry]

Hi reamon i have a 80 cm dish with 3 LNB'S fitted. I set up on 13e as my primary to align the dish, then i fitted my secondaries 19e and Thor 0.8w all connected to 4 to 1 down switch fitted to the frame of my dish. I scanned each satelite on to my receiver first starting in with position 1 Hotbird 13e, position 2 Astra 19e, position 3 Thor 0.8w, As for my Astra 28e i ran this from my sky mini dish (Sky LNB with 4 connections 2 of which went to HD Skybox for Sky+ the third connection on the Sky LNB is a spare) the 4 Sky LNB connection is then connected to the 4 position on the down switch and scanned to position 4 on the receiver. By using the Sky dish for 28e this gives room on the 80cm dish to easily fit the 3 LNB'S for 13e, 19e AND 0.8w. Do hope this all make sense

[reamon]

Thanks so much echelon and johnhenry for your helpful replies, you have made sense of a lot of things for me.

[echelon]

Hi reamon i have a 80 cm dish with 3 LNB'S fitted. I set up on 13e as my primary to align the dish, then i fitted my secondaries 19e and Thor 0.8w all connected to 4 to 1 down switch fitted to the frame of my dish. I scanned each satelite on to my receiver first starting in with position 1 Hotbird 13e, position 2 Astra 19e, position 3 Thor 0.8w, As for my Astra 28e i ran this from my sky mini dish (Sky LNB with 4 connections 2 of which went to HD Skybox for Sky+ the third connection on the Sky LNB is a spare) the 4 Sky LNB connection is then connected to the 4 position on the down switch and scanned to position 4 on the receiver. By using the Sky dish for 28e this gives room on the 80cm dish to easily fit the 3 LNB'S for 13e, 19e AND 0.8w. Do hope this all make sense

excellent explanation and more or less my conclusion when I said keep the sly dish with quad on sly at 28 east on astra 2

and use the new second larger dish he mentions for 2 or 3 satellites via this new diseqc switch , with one feed tapping from the existing sly dish and its quad lnb , all down to the vu+ lnb input from said switch