Raymarine 45 STV South Of France

[FairlineSpeedos]

Hi,

Does anyone have a Raymarine 45stv dome for receiving sky in the South of France? I know that the 2a south beam covers most of the med but it has only got a hanful of channels, the 2d focussed beam is the one that you want. Seems that the 45 would be fine based on this footprint map http://www.lyngsat-maps.com/maps/astra2d.html but practical experience means much more than a footprint map.

Mike.

 

[jfm]

Scuse my ignorance but my reading of that map is that SofF is less than 50 everywhere, which means you need 55cm dish or bigger. A 45cm is too small. Or am I reading the map wrongly?

I have 60cm dish which is fine, in Antibes. NickH on here has a 37 or 40 and will be able to tell you what he can view with that

 

[FairlineSpeedos]

Hi JFM, not ignorance at all, it is a fair point but let me explain.

STV domes seem to have gains which are higher than that of fixed dishes which are of a greater surface area. Coverage maps tend to deal with fixed dish requirements.

For example: If you look at the raymarine footprint for Astra 2a South and using the outer footrint of the 60stv as a guide http://www.raymarine.co.uk/view/?id=229#Europe , you will see that it is equivilant with a required 65-85cm flat fixed dish on the official dish size requirements. http://www.lyngsat-maps.com/maps/astra2a_south.html

Even the beam map from my first post is contradicted here for example http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=as...&tbnw=128&start=0&ndsp=24&ved=1t:429,r:17,s:0

It seems like in practice a 45stv performs like a 60cm fixed dish and a 60stv like a 90cm fixed dish (or more possibly due to its automatic scew)

Astra's website then goes on to contradic everything above suggesting a 45stv performs like a 90 and a 60stv like a 1.2m!!! https://sat.ses.com/webservice/images/7406484 But whichever is right, clearly your 60stv works just fine.

So it really comes down to practical experience like you have with your 60. My gut feeling is that I should change my 45stv for a 60 to be safe, particulary in poor weather, uncommon in SOF I know but when it happens it is the most likely time that you will need your Sky most Then again, if I dont need to I can keep more diesel cash in the safe....

 

[Nick_H]

Can't help much i'm afraid. We get BBC news on a 37 cms KVH, but that hasn't been on 2D up until now. We don't get any other channels, but then i've never tried to get them as the news is all we want, so I couldn't tell you whether it's because the dish is too small, or whether I just haven't set it up correctly.

 

[EME]

Fixed... not Marine

Not Raymarine STV -- and not even boaty but most folks with 'fixed' dishes in SoF go higher than the maps. We use a 120 for Sky and even then lose reception on terrestial channels in bad weather or after the 'witching' hour when signals get weaker (c. 1900 hrs).

 

[lisilou]

I enquired about this at Aztec MarinE the other day and according to their 'footprint' info, we would only require 37cm to cover that area more than comfortably. Can only tell you what I was advised tho.
Lisa

 

[Hurricane]

My three pennyworth

My experience is that our Raymarine 60 cm dish out performs KVH ones on boats next to us - but this might just be setup - I carefully set ours up.

On the other hand, we switch from the 60 cm dome to an 80 cm domestic dish on our home berth. In this instance, the 80cm domestic significantly out performs the 60cm Raymarine domes thus enabling us to get BBC1 etc from Astra 2D.

Our base is on mainland Spain but we were in the SoF earlier this year and the 60cm Rymarine domes worked well.

However, it's the age old question - what do you want to pick up/watch.

Nick explains that BBC 24 News works in his area - in fact he is a little out of date - sorry Nick - they moved News 24 to Astra 2D on Sept 23rd and the signal is now even weaker than BBC 1 London.

In the SoF, my 60cm Raymarin e dish picked up some of the Astra 2D channels - some of the time.

Alternatively most Sky channels work well thorughout this part of the Med. So Sky News is available - Nick there's a good chance that you will pick up Sky News with your smaller dish - I think Sky News is transmitted in clear (not scrambled).

Hope that helps - any other specific questions.