Basic HTML-Version
1
2
3
4
117
www.TELE-satellite.com —
12-01/2012 —
TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
the user to change and/or up-
date all parameters including
DiSEqC port settings, LO fre-
quencies, transponder names,
and parameters.
The AutoFind technology
that is built into the FastAlign
7100 Pro satellite meter is an
automatic satellite recognition
technology that recognizes
the satellite that your antenna
is pointing to and then dis-
plays the name of that satel-
lite on the meter’s LCD display
from the preprogrammed list
of satellites stored in the me-
ter’s memory. Directly above
the name of the satellite is
also a signal quality bar graph
that can be used to fine tune
the antenna for best possible
signal.
The timing of this test re-
port couldn’t have been
any better. Hurricane Irene
passed through our test cen-
ter here on Long Island, New
York just a few days ago. She
brought with her quite a bit of
wind that resulted in many of
our dish antennas being blown
out of alignment. This proved
to be the perfect opportunity
to put the meter through its
paces. The worst hit antenna
was our 3.0-meter C-band
mesh dish. The strong winds
created such a great amount
of torque that the entire an-
tenna assembly spun around
on top of the mast. So much
for the mounting bolts that
were supposed to keep the
antenna in place. This seemed
like a good place to start.
Once the dish was placed
back into a position that was
close to what it was before
the storm, we connected the
Lexium FastAlign 7100 Pro to
the C-band LNB. The C-band
antenna was pointed to GAL-
AXY 17 at 91W before Irene
greeted us so the goal was
to realign the antenna to that
satellite. But before we tried
to find GALAXY 17 with the
Lexium meter, we first had
to program this satellite as
well as a few of the surround-
ing satellites into the satellite
meter since these were not
preprogrammed in the meter.
As mentioned before, some
of the preprogrammed satel-
lites stored in memory were
Asian satellites so we decided
to reprogram some of these
1. While searching for GALAXY 17, the meter first found GALAXY
28. We continued moving the antenna until…
2. …the meter locked onto the GALAXY 17 satellite at 89W
3. Confirmation that our 90cm antenna was still pointed to
GALAXY at 97W.
4. The Lexium FastAlign 7100 Pro satellite meter helped us find
GALAXY 3C in no time at all.
entries with the American sat-
ellites that we needed. Since
we wanted to find GALAXY 17,
we programmed this satellite
as well as the two surrounding
satellites GALAXY 28 at 89W
and GALAXY 25 at 93W.
Now that the Lexium meter
has the correct satellite infor-
mation, it was time to realign
our C-band dish. We turned
the satellite meter on and
selected DAY mode since the
sun was shining brightly out-
side and we therefore didn’t
need any backlighting on the
LCD display. We then used to
left/right arrow buttons (F2/
F3) to find the Auto Search
screen and pressed the OK
button (F1) to start the Auto
Search. The FastAlign 7100
Pro was now actively search-
ing for satellite signals.
The C-band dish was slow-
ly rotated on its mast while
keeping an eye on the satel-
lite meter. It didn’t take long
for the meter to lock onto a
signal; the green “signal lock”
LED on the front panel illumi-
nated and it instantly identi-
fied the satellite as GALAXY
28. Since we wanted to align
to GALAXY 17, we knew that
we had to rotate the antenna
just a little more to the right
(west) in order to find GAL-
AXY 17. And, sure enough, a
few seconds later the green
“signal lock” LED on the front
panel illuminated once again
and the Lexium meter report-
ed that we had found GALAXY
17. As mentioned before, the
display shows not only the
satellite name but also a sig-
nal quality bar graph mak-
ing it a snap to fine tune the
antenna. After adjusting the
antenna for the best possible
signal, all the mounting hard-
ware was retightened and in
just a few minutes our C-band
antenna was back in service.
The Lexium FastAlign 7100
Pro satellite meter not only
identified the correct satel-
lite by name, it also told us if
we were on a different satel-
lite by also identifying it by
name. We therefore knew
exactly which way to turn the
antenna to find the target sat-
ellite. There were no guessing
games involved.
The Lexium meter’s Quick
Sweep technology allows the
meter to react to satellite sig-
nals very quickly. There is no
lag time from when the satel-
lite signal reaches your dish
antenna to when it is displayed
on the meter. This allows you
to move your dish at a faster
rate across the satellite arc
without having to worry about
overshooting the target satel-
lite. The quick response of the
meter will prevent you from
missing the satellite you want
to receive.
But we weren’t finished. Our
test center also has a smaller
90cm Ku-band antenna point-
ed to GALAXY 19 at 97W that
fortunately wasn’t affected
by Hurricane Irene. Never-
theless, we wanted to “make
sure” that everything was still
OK with this antenna. First of
all, we used the Lexium meter
to confirm that this was the
case. The green “signal lock”
LED popped on and the meter
showed that indeed our 90cm
antenna was still pointed to
GALAXY 19 and that Hurricane
Irene’s wrath did not bother it
at all. But we wanted to go a
step further and see how long
it would take for us to find the
GALAXY 3C satellite at 95W.
Both satellites were already
preprogrammed in the me-
ter so we had to do nothing
more than connect the meter
to the LNB and start mov-
ing the dish. The mounting
screws were loosened on the
antenna and the realignment
began. The dish was moved
slowly east and within just a
few seconds the Lexium me-
ter chimed in letting us know
we had found GALAXY 3C. It
really doesn’t get any easier
than that.
The Lexium meter’s user
manual specifies that the me-
ter can be used for about four
hours on fully charged batter-
ies. In our tests we were able
to use the 7100 Pro for the en-