Simplest, best way to mount & point Dish to get your bird in the sky

[antennaman1]

I follow Sadoun's dish install recipe for success, however, believe I may need some more equipment. Does anyone suggest a meter for assistance? If you can teach me compass and angle qualifier, that would be great as well. thanks in advance.

[Jim-S]

When I installed my system, I first found a signal on the most southern satellite. and after I could see all sats. I then used a simple meter from Sadoun to fine tune it worked great.

[cnagorka@gmail.com]

Don't bother with the little analog signal meters, they don't do much to help. I would say the key to the whole thing is paying attention to the magnetic deviation of your compass. Everyone thinks, "I just set this up to point exactly south." That will work in some locations, but not many. If you pay close attention to the deviation, then use the USALS system on your reciever to move the dish to your closest true south sat, you will be close.

Note: I've pointed this out in other posts, but I'll say it again: the blind scan function on your reciever can be your best friend. You can set everything up where you think it should be, and run a blind scan to see if you hit anything. If you do, you can check what you found against the Lyngsat listings and see if you're lined up correctly, and if not, you'll know which direction you need to turn the assembly.

Funny story about this exact subject: just last week I was setting up my first big dish (7.5'), and I've had no experience at all setting up a big dish with polar mount and Actuator. All my experience is with small dishes and H-H motors. Anyway, I set everything up where I thought it was supposed to be, and on my first blind scan, I pick up one transponder, and it has the Pennsylvania Cable Network on it. I end up being completely confused, because that channel was on the AMC6 sat at 72W, and I was trying to look at 87W. That's 15 degrees off, but the signal was coming through loud and clear. I'm thinking, how is this happening? I can't be that far off! So I double check the listings, and what do you know- PCN moved to AMC9 at 83W! Being as I'm at 81.8W, I was accidentally hitting my true south sat which up until recently didn't have any active C band transponders at all.

CN