New to the hobby

[SpiffWilkie]

True south is 89w. Single and 10750 are the settings in the menu. If the lnb is a few degrees off skew will I still get some signal? I sat and twisted the lnb while looking at the meter but couldn't see any difference at all.

 

[phlatwound]

If the rest of your setup is correct, and your dish is aimed properly, a few degrees of skew either direction won't make much difference on a strong transponder.

 

[Lak7]

What is your Dish Elevation set at?

 

[SpiffWilkie]

What is your Dish Elevation set at?

Just below 50.

Thanks for the help so far. I need to quit for the night but tomorrow I will prevail!!

 

[Lak7]

That's the Spirit!
By the way, are you located close to Memphis?

 

[SpiffWilkie]

That's the Spirit!
By the way, are you located close to Memphis?

Smack dab in the middle of it!

 

[Lak7]

Good, that means you have your Dish elevation set correctly!
Is there something particular on AMC3 you want?
If not, may I suggest trying for 74west. This Sat's name has changed several times recently, look for one of these in the Receivers Sat list:
Horizons 2, Galaxy 17, SBS6

Here is the info:
Dish Elevation:45.7°
LNB skew: -21.4° (Clockwise looking from the LNB at the Dish)
Azimuth (magn.)using Compass: 154.1°

In the Sat Setup look for this Transponder in the list:
Freq: 11733
Polarity: Horizontal
Scan Rate: 6616

Remember to enter the proper LNB settings:
LNB Type = Single or Standard
LNB L.O. = 10750

 

[SpiffWilkie]

There wasn't anything in particular I wanted on that sat. Just happened that I had a good line of sight and I *thought* it would be easy to get.

 

[SpiffWilkie]

Questions, questions, questions. I think that I am going to bolt the dish to the roof of a shed in my backyard. However, there is a tree overhanging the shed. I thought I read that the actual signals are actually 22° higher than the dish elevation. Is that correct? The highest elevation for my location is just under 50°. Does that mean I need to make sure that I have at least a 70° line of sight if I want a sat at that elevation?
Thanks!

 

[rv1pop]

Chain saw time!
50 degrees is the angle you want. The look-like angle will be 50-22 or 38 degrees.

 

[SpiffWilkie]

I hope I don't need to do any trimming. I'll get the laser out there and see if I can manage how it is...

 

[SpiffWilkie]

YAY! Finally got it working. I tried to change it to 116.8w but couldn't find anything where I though that was (I can't find my compass!!). I kept getting really strong signals from the general direction of that one which I assumed were from 119w instead. My meter was turned all the way down but the needle was still all the way at 10. Anyhow, I decided to set the elevation for 123w and just slowly swing the dish around and suddenly I was getting green!!! Yay for me. I'm in the middle of trying to tweak it to get better signals on some of the weaker transponders. We'll see how that goes.

This was a little more involved than I expected. It would have been easier to steal cable (NOTE: I DON'T CONDONE THAT) but this is much for fun in the end (and LEGAL!). I've decided that with my lack of ability to point this thing, I'm definitely going for a motorized setup when I learn a little more.

Thanks everyone for the help, tips, etc. I'm sure I'll be around asking many more questions!

Thanks again,
Steve

 

[Lak7]

Nothing like getting Green for the first time!
123(Galaxy 18) is a good Sat too, RTN is a trip.

 

[SpiffWilkie]

Grrr...just when I think I have it all figured out...
My motor is coming in tomorrow and so I tried to go ahead and try and pick up G28 since that is my true south sat. I had to manually add it since it wasn't already in my receiver. I added the transponders from Iceberg's sticky but couldn't get a signal from 11780 H 29000 (quality is in the teens). 11952 V 19532 gives me a quality in the 90's. Doing a blind scan only gives me the ABC news channels. I guess I need to do some more "fiddling" (If I may get technical) tomorrow.

 

[Lak7]

Did you set LNB skew back to Zero?

 

[SpiffWilkie]

Wow...this dish is kicking my butt. I got the motor sort of set up. I could successfully hit a few satellites. I could get 89w, 97w, 123w and a couple others I don't remember offhand. I don't think I can hit the easternmost ones and some between 97 and 120~ due to line of sight issues. I was trying to get BYUTV and was able to get it at pretty good quality but decided to fiddle with things some more. When I assembled my dish I set it up like an egg on it's end, taller than it is wide, because that was the most obvious way the hardware went together. Well, tonight I got the bright idea to try and mount it longways instead. By rearranging some brackets, I can get it to mount that way, but the lnb arm was a little crooked as my highly detailed drawing shows:

So I shimmed it up a bit to get it back center-like. However, I still am unable to get any signal with the dish mounted this way. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

I guess the point of this post is that this is difficult stuff...and 97w has some awesome stuff on there. Weird, but awesome.

 

[Tron]

Offset dishes are taller than they are wide to compensate for the deflection angle of the signal (if you look at the dish from 22 degrees above it, it will appear absolutely circular). Mounting them on their side will not work, since they are not designed to properly bounce the signal to the LNB when in that configuration.

 

[SpiffWilkie]

Good to know. Looks like I'll be spending another afternoon on the roof of the shed.

 

[rv1pop]

Offset dishes are taller than they are wide to compensate for the deflection angle of the signal (if you look at the dish from 22 degrees above it, it will appear absolutely circular). Mounting them on their side will not work, since they are not designed to properly bounce the signal to the LNB when in that configuration.

The primestar / Channel Master dishes are an exception to that rule ... but I have not found any documentation on HOW they work, but, who cares! They work FINE!

 

[SpiffWilkie]

I have the dish put back the right way and realigned to south and all that good stuff. I have tried to get 87w, 89w, 91w, 97w, 101w, and 123w. I can get channels from all of those satellites, but I can't get everything I want from them at the moment (PBS on 87, BYU on 89, and some RTNs on 123 for example). I can tweak the dish a little but I'm afraid to mess it up worse than it already is.
Would a new lnb possibly help, or maybe multiple lnbs? I was looking at getting an lnb that would allow me to get circular signals as well (Nasa in particular). Is there one I can get that would possibly improve my ability to pick up signals?

Thanks,
Steve