Interesting signal meter behavior

[wejones]

Yesterday, I was playing around with my 6' dish that's mounted on a little tree. I haven't touched this dish for about a year, and the tree is still alive, so it has gotten out of alignment {DUH} . Anyway, I put my signal meter on it, and tried searching for a satellite. Without watching where the dish was aiming, I was adjusting the elevation following the squeal of the meter. The meter reading kept getting higher and higher as I lowered the dish. When I finally paid attention to where the dish was aiming, it was almost parallel to the ground! Ie I was apparently peaking ground noise, or perhaps some terrestrial microwave signal or something. This wasn't that surprising to me, however what was surprising is that I happened to move my hand in front of the feedhorn, and when I did, the meter reading went UP, dramatically. I know that my hand is probalbly fairly transparent when it comes to RF, but I was still expecting the signal to go down, not go up.
Can anyone think of ANY reason why the meter reading should go UP when I block the throat of the feedhorn with my hand????
I had to quit before I ever found a satellite, so I'm not positive that my feed/lnb is actually functional, since it's been out in the weather un-used so long, it may not be.

[N4ST]

Egads! You found the tracking chip the government placed in your hand!

[wejones]

Originally Posted by N4ST

Egads! You found the tracking chip the government placed in your hand!

That's as good as any explanation I could come up with. The government took blood from me every year I worked for them, maybe they put something back in it's place.

[rainman]

Originally Posted by wejones

That's as good as any explanation I could come up with. The government took blood from me every year I worked for them, maybe they put something back in it's place.

may have been just the natural electrical field in your body Bill. I think i can produce roughly a 1 volt reading on a vom.

[wejones]

I was back outside playing with the 6' dish again yesterday. When I first started playing, and found that signal went up when I blocked the feed, I eventually raised the dish and found G26, which was the sat I was looking for. Wasn't peaked on it, but I had to quit. So yesterday, I tried again. Had the NET PBS signal up on it, and went outside, and peaked the signal with the meter. Came inside and the NET signal was GONE. Since I had significantly increased the signal on the meter, I decided to try a blind scan. Found a couple transponders (mentioned in another thread), and since I couldn't find them listed in Lyngsat, I searched with my big dish, and found them on G3c. So I figured that I had bumped the dish off G26 somehow. This dish has an actuator without a motor, so I used a file in the slot to manually turn the dish to the east. Signal went down gradually, then up, as I turned east. Peaked on this new sat, figuring that it had to be G26. Went inside... NO NET.... did a blind scan. I was on G11!?!?! Went back outside....moved the dish back to the west, peaked on a sat. This time I was on G16!?!?! Back outside moved a bit east, peaked, inside.... I was on G3c again. Finally, I turned the receiver to the NET channel on G26, turned the volume way up on my TV, and slowly turned the dish east from G3c. As I turned, the signal meter was going DOWN, and when at what seemed to be a minimum between 2 satellites, BOOM, I had the NET channel booming audio out at me.
So it seemed that I was getting peak readings for G11, G3c and G16, but I was seeing the other sats as a minimum reading (minimum at least across the arc, as if I did the pull down, lift up thing, the signal got even lower, so it was peaked relative to elevation, but a minimum across the arc.
I've seen this happen with my little 3' dishes on Ku, and blamed it on the high power DTV/Dishnet/Nimiq sats, but this was on C-band, where I expected the sat signals to be relatively equal, so this surprised me. Strange too, that the sats I got peaks on were all old Galaxy type sats, while the ones with minimum readings were the old Telstar type sats.
I suppose tha the logical reason for this was just the relative usage of the sats, ie full time vs part time or something, and the fact that I was using a smaller C-band dish not capable of the resolution necessary to eliminate adjacent sats, but I found it kind of interesting.
But one more example of how a signal meter can help you find the arc, but can be very frustrating relative to finding an individual satellite.