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TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
— 12-01/2012
— www.TELE-satellite.com
tire duration of our tests with-
out having to recharge the
batteries. Of course, if you
plan on using the signal meter
to drive a DiSEqC 1.2 motor,
you can expect the operation-
al time of your meter to be
somewhat less because of the
extra load created by an an-
tenna motor. Since these are
AA rechargeable batteries,
you can always carry around
a spare set of conventional
AA batteries just in case the
rechargeable ones die and
there’s no opportunity to re-
charge them in between jobs.
In this way, you can continue
to work and not have to worry
about the meter dying in the
middle of an alignment.
Other niceties include a
user-settable timer that will
shut the meter off after a
certain amount of inactivity.
It’s a nice feature that helps
save your batteries in case
you should forget to turn the
meter off after a job. The Lex-
ium meter can also be used in
Manual Search mode. In this
mode the meter will only iden-
tify the selected satellite but
it will lock onto the desired
satellite just as quickly as in
Auto Search mode. And let’s
not forget DiSEqC 1.2 mode.
In this mode the meter can
be used to drive any DiSEqC
1.2 compatible antenna mo-
tor and will allow you to easily
align a motor driven antenna.
Overall, we were quite
impressed by the capabili-
ties of the Lexium FastAlign
7100 Pro satellite meter. It
performed as advertised by
identifying satellites by name
as the antenna was swept
across the satellite arc. This
automatic identification of
satellites makes antenna in-
stallations quick and painless;
the installer will know exactly
which way to move a dish if
the meter names a satellite
other than the target satellite.
The FastAlign 7100 Pro
takes a lot of the guesswork
out of satellite antenna instal-
lations. What more could you
ask for?
Customers interested in
this product can contact WS
International via www.wsi-
digital.com to request contact
information for local distribu-
tors in their region.
Using the Lexium
FastAlign 7100 Pro in Europe
Thomas Haring
TRA 19.2° east or HOTBIRD
13.0° east, although there
are some less popular sat-
ellites in the list. These in-
clude HELLAS SAT at 39°
east, EXPRESS AM22 at 53°
east, BONUM1 at 56° east,
INTELSAT 904 at 60° east
as well as ABS1 at 75°.
Before we began to add
some other more standard
European satellite posi-
tions, we first wanted to
test the capabilities of the
FastAlign 7100 Pro with the
existing data.
The ABS1 satellite at 75°
east is fairly weak and more
difficult to receive in Europe
and the FEC of 7/8 (seven of
the eight data bits are infor-
mation bits with only one bit
an error correction bit) that
nearly every transponder
has presents quite a chal-
lenge. Quite a few other
signal analyzers “overlook”
this satellite during antenna
alignment since the tuner
more often than not can’t
read and process the weak-
er, error-prone signal fast
1. The FastAlign 7100 Pro
mastered the reception of the
ABS satellite at 75° east; other
signal analyzers were not up to
the task.
2. The analyzer also had no
trouble with the HELLASSAT bird
at 39° east, one of the 27 satellite
positions preprogrammed in the
original version of the FastAlign
7100 Pro.
The way the Lexium
FastAlign 7100 Pro is deliv-
ered from the factory, it’s
clear that it’s focus is on
North America. But since
Lexium is planning to market
this product in other regions
of the world, we thought it
would be a good idea to
send our test sample to the
TELE-satellite test center in
Austria so that its function-
ality can also be checked
out in Europe.
The preprogrammed sat-
ellite and transponder list
in the Lexium signal me-
ter does not include any
of the popular DTH satel-
lites in Europe such as AS-