[wejones]

Bob
Since you are a HAM, it seems possible (likely) that you have a communications receiver capable of receiving 950 and 1450 MHz. If so, you might try experimenting looking for the beacons for these satellites. I've been trying to think of a portable alternative to using those little signal strength meters, so a couple days ago, I started searching for some of the beacons for these sats. I've tried this before, and didn't find them, but I had forgotten that the LNBs drift so much that I wasn't looking in a wide enough spectrum.
When I tried this time, I found what I'm pretty sure are the beacons of a couple sats, and they give me a nice signal strength reading on my communications receiver, and this wouldn't be confused by TI or signal coming in from nearby DBS satellites. The only problem is that these beacons are at different freqs, and they will show up at different places because of LNB drift. Ie most of these are within about half a MHz below 1450, and or half a MHz above 950, if you put a "T" with a DC-block in line with your LNB coax. I see them as just a quieting carrier that seems fairly narrow. I think I was picking it up on a 15 KHz bandwith mode, plus another bandwidth, not sure if wider or narrower. However most LNBs drift up to about a MHz.
But what I was thinking, depending on what receivers you have, would be to put a communications receiver in scan mode, scanning maybe a 1 MHz band around 950 and/or 1450, and hopefully the receiver would stop when it found a beacon, and you'd get a signal strength reading that was only from a satellite? You can verify it's a sat signal by switching polarity, and the signal goes away.
I'm not sure how practical this would be, I used a big desktop receiver that wouldn't be much good out at the dish, but if you have a small portable receiver, it might be something fun to play with.
Just a thought.