I was installing a fixed dish this weekend to pick up galaxy 15 (?) Old I-5 and noticed a few things I thought I'd pass on.
A 30" fortec dish is marginal at my location in SW PA, but I am able to get about 135 channels., 21 transponders.
I adjusted skew by tuning a fairly strong transponder, and doing the skew adjustment until I thought it was peaked. Then I pulled or pushed the LNB in or out until I was out of the focus point, noted a drop in quality, but still locked.
The skew became much more touchy, and I found there was only one place I could maintain lock and reasonable quality numbers. Once I had that skew setting, I pushed the LNB back in (or out) until the quality number peaked.
I'm using an old FortecStar Lifetime Ultra recently flashed to factory code, and I got 85 strength, 74 qual on the strongest channel (God Channel I believe).
The lnb arm is bendable- pushing up or down can change the quality number quite a bit- almost an adjustment in itself if the dish is locked hard. No side braces on this model. (80 cm).
Then the fun started. I blind scanned and got only a few transponders, and the quality numbers were way down. About that time I decided to go inside, as I was getting cold.
Then it hit me- These receivers are made to hit a (low) price point, and the temperature co-efficents on the tuners and such are probably really poor. I was tuning with a receiver in 50 degree (f) weather, and as the receiver cooled off,the tuning was drifiting also. Mhz Worldview, usually easy to get, was in breakup by the time I tuned it in after 25 mins of blind scan.
So I hooked the dish to the DiseQ switch, came inside, and scanned using the warm
Mercury II, and got 21 transponders, 135 channels, etc. All good.
So- keep that receiver temp stable if you can when tuning outdoors this fall.
Larry