Newbies Guide and Introduction to Understanding Lyngsat.com

In some of my previous articles, I wrote about navigating the lyngsat website for intermediate and advanced users. Today’s post will focus on doing the same for my beloved readers who are beginners or newbies to satellite TV installation. Apart from this, it is sometimes tricky to interpret the contents of lyngsat with respect to those visiting the website for the first time. Never mind, I was once in your shoes, but now I know better, and that is why I am doing this introduction to lyngsat for beginners.

Articles For Reading:

• Pre-Calculate The Size of the Satellite Dish/Antenna to Be Used or Any Satellite TV Package

• Introduction To The Most Popular Free-To-Air Satellite TV Channels and Frequencies

• How to Manually Track a Satellite Dish Network & Frequencies

• Beginner’s Guide to how the Satellite TV Works and Its Scope

Introduction to lyngsat for beginners in Brief

The trick to match Satellite and orbital positions on Lyngsat.com

First off, to all Free-to-Air satellite TV enthusiasts and aspiring installers worldwide, lyngsat.com is a very important website for getting useful information about satellite TV channels.

This tutorial will teach you how lyngsat works and how to use it in layman’s language. Suffice it to say that organizations like Globecast (an international Telecommunications giant from France) use lyngsat.

To make this very comprehensive, I included at least two illustrations. When you first visit www.lyngsat.com you will be greeted with the featured image below:

Now, since I live in Nigeria, I wrote this for people living specifically in the Sub-Saharan region of Africa. For residents of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, when searching for satellite TV information on lyngsat, the link to click on the homepage of lyngsat is the Europe link under column 73E – 0E, as shown in the image above.

Notice that if you live in Sub-Sahara Africa, the satellite receivable list is mainly in Europe and the “Atlantic” links on the Satellites row. So you can also click on the Atlantic link on the Satellites row instead of Europe. However, I will limit myself to Europe in this tutorial because that is where the bulk of the satellite receivable in sub-Saharan Africa is located.

Definition of Basic Terms that will Help you Understand Lyngsat Better

Interestingly, it would be best to have a bit of your geography knowledge. Satellite positions are named after the corresponding longitude line on Earth. A Longitude is a geographic coordinate that tells us the east or west position of a point on the Earth from the prime meridian. It is an angular measurement and expressed in degrees.

All DTH(direct-to-home) satellite TV signals are parked into an orbit corresponding to the equator back to Earth. So, aiming your dish from anywhere on Earth is just aiming at a projection of the equator in the sky.

After clicking on Europe, the picture below represents the exact image you will see. Notice that it now lists Europe, Africa, and the Middle East at the top.

Don’t Miss: Predetermine the size of dish/antenna to be used for any Satellite TV packages

Beginner’s Guide on how to use Lyngsat.com

Now, there is a big list that starts from 72.1ºE(Intelsat 22) to 1.9ºE (BulgariaSat 1).

Example 1: How to decode satellite frequency bands on lyngsat

In addition,  there are two bands of satellite TV frequencies, namely the C band and the Ku band. If we read to the right of the first satellite at 72.1ºE you will see the satellite name, Intelsat 22, and right beside it,  you will see KU, which means that this satellite houses both C-band and Ku-band frequencies.

Especially relevant: Definition of LNB Skew and LNB Clock Methodology for Beginners

Example 2:Using the satellite at position 52.5E Al Yah 1(Ku Band satellite)

From the image above, with the help of my arrow in the image, can you name the Dstv or Zuku/startimes satellite? I’ll give you a hint. DStv is 36ºE while Zuku is 4.9ºE.

Now, let me help you to answer my question; “Do you name the Dstv or Zuku satellite?”

Most times, one satellite contains several packages. Therefore, my hint of 36 deg East and 4.9 deg may have confused you since there are several satellites under the orbital positions 36E AND 4.9E.

This is so because the satellites are close together, so much so that most of them are receivable using a single satellite dish. The correct answers are Eutelsat 36B and SES5, respectively.

Now, if you click on the 36 deg East link, you will be directed to a list of all channels on the satellites Express AMU 1 and Eutelsat 36B. But if you choose to click on the individual satellite names, you will be directed to the individual list of channels and providers. For example, I opted to click only on Eutelsat 36B and got all sorts of satellite TV packages with unique names. Among these are DStv channels, as shown in the image below.

Example 3:

Now, trace the orbital position 7 deg East and click on it or the satellite name Eutelsat 7C. You will notice that two satellites here share the same orbital position. This is not uncommon.

Now let us go back and select the other satellite at that position, which is Eutelsat 7B with receivable transponder frequency in most of Sub-Sahara Africa inclusive of Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Congo, Malawi, Zambia e.t.c. The Transponder frequency is 11356 H 45000. I bet you will see something similar to this with a few differences.

Conclusion

I have explained the basics of lyngsat with the aid of highlighted images. If you want to proceed to the intermediate and advanced knowledge of lyngsat, you can read my article on how you can predetermined the dish size to use for any given satellite. A good free-to-air satellite receiver will handle the rest (frequency, symbol rate, FEC rate, and the PIDs) provided your dish is pointed in that direction.

Furthermore, why not check out our article strictly on all the 100% Free-to-Air channels you can receive in Africa?