Hey everybody..... well, I've read the stickies, and tried to make sense of testing true fta sats..... but I'm still having troubles with the basics..
I am in Northern Ontario... Postal code P0H 2L0.
I have a few receivers namely a Coolsat 5000, Viewsat 2000 - both
Platinum and Extreme and my latest, an Extremeview Magnum XV-3300.
I have a 33" Oval Starchoice dish I found in the dump a month ago... with the ku lnb. (I think it said 19.7 / 22khz? on the lnb) I also have available to me, a 36" round Starchoice pan, one of the older models (but it's at my dads)
No motor. For the sake of testing, I *think* the best sat for me is 123w Galaxy 10R. (more english offerings) but can't determine if something else may be better for me .... I mean, from AMC, T5, and the rest on lyngsat, 10R appears to offer movies and lots of other decent channels..... but, do these FTA boxes derupt PowerVU, Digicipher (I don't think VC2 has ever been cracked yet) how many of these channels am I going to get in reality? If I should consider a different sat, please let me know.
So anyway, moving on.... the 33" oval is mounted straight, with NO skew on the pan. Sat calculator game me elevation of 22.6 (Sudbury, closest city) and I've tried up and down a little from there - the dish is aimed just a little to the right of 119 (didn't use a compass) but from playing around I didn't detect ANY quality...
Assuming I continue with Galaxy 10R, what's the BEST way to achieve this? I have the dish on the patio.... a 10' foot cable going to a line amp.... going to one of those cheap analog meters.... going to the back of the coolsat 5000....with antenna setup on 123W Galaxy 10R... I'm NOT certain if I'm configuring the sat correctly...
Anyway.. I'm kind of just rambling. Any tips here? Whats the best way to go about actually HITTING Galaxy.... I didn't detect any audible spikes in the tone off the meter, didn't detect any quality when scanning either... so I need to figure out how to aim, and how to configure the box....
Maybe I missed a sticky on this... if somebody can help me out, it would be appreciated, my next step is to buy a motor and a larger pan..... Thanks!