Buying a satellite finder, spend more to get the DVB-S2 version

[gizmofreak]

Hello folks.

I am looking to buy a decent satellite finder unit as I'm getting tired of using the simple needle /buzzer type ones that never really get me anywhere.
I can never get anywhere with the smartphone dish alignment apps either, even though I have paid for some of them.

In order to get the job done quicker and without giving myself a migraine each time, I'm looking to spend some money and buy the below unit:

However this only seems to have a DVB-S tuner and not a DVB-S2. Other units in the same price range (and higher) come with DVB-S2 tuners and I'm wondering what the difference is?
Perhaps one day when SD channels on the DVB-S standard are all turned off then this unit will be rendered useless as a satellite finder? Or perhaps when this day comes this unit till still find the satellites but won;t be able to display any of the channels?

If someone can help to clear this up for me I'd really appreciate it. I'll be using this mainly for locating 28.2E by the way.

Thanks!

[DaMacFunkin]

What below unit?

[adm]

If someone can help to clear this up for me I'd really appreciate it. I'll be using this mainly for locating 28.2E by the way.

Thanks!

We don't know which unit you are considering but if its one of the sub £100/100 Euro units try reading some of the 1 star reviews on Amazon. You may still be better of with the less than £10 unit with the needle and buzzer.

[gizmofreak]

WHOOPS!!

This is the one I'm thinking of purchasing; it has decent reviews on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/SATlink-WS-6950-Digital-Satellite-Display/dp/B00DDMWBTA

[twol]

WHOOPS!!

This is the one I'm thinking of purchasing; it has decent reviews on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/SATlink-WS-6950-Digital-Satellite-Display/dp/B00DDMWBTA

I live right on the edge of signal reception (with a 1.5M dish) for Astra 2E/2F UK beam channels, so having had to set up a few dishes over the last 3 years from 80cm to 1.5M have to say the easiest and most accurate way of doing this is is as follows: (but apologies if you have tried :) )

1) Install Krkadoni Enigma Signal Meter (free - Android, Windows PC or Windows phone) ... it accesses your Enigma receiver (so need Wifi connection to your LAN) and gives a vocal readout of the signal reading leaving you to fiddle with the dish with both hands .... an immense advantage.
1) Use any of the satfinder apps to know roughly which direction/elevation you point the dish to get 28.2E (or any other).... 5 mins prior to doing the work - I usually take note of a suitable marker such as a tree which is roughly in line :)
2) Then use a bleeper meter to roughly align the dish having set it to what should be the correct elevation (from Satfinder)...... 5 mins
3) Connect your laptop/phone with Enigma Signal Meter to your E2 receiver select one of the best reception channels eg Sky1 and fiddle until best signal
4) Repeat with BBC1 HD.
3 and 4 can take some time (half an hour) but if you live in the UK should be like falling off a log .. dead simple :)

.. and if you live ouside the UK.......modify the LNB skew.

Then again you can spend a 100 pounds plus :)

[gizmofreak]

Hi Twol

Thanks for the detailed instructions. The issue I have here is that I won;t have access to any enigma box at the places where I need to do the alignment.
So far out of the 3 dishes that I've put up (all around the London area) I haven't been able to get signal on any of them. I'm performing the alignment doing the following:

1. Use neighbouring dishes to get the approximate Azimuth direction to point the dish and choose the correct wall to fix the dish on to (zone 1 raven dish with zinwell quad lnb). I'll chose a location where there are no major obstacles in the line of sight to the satellite such as trees / buildings.
2. Erect the dish using spirit levels and also making sure that the spirit level on the lnb shows as level.
2. Use Dish Align smartphone app to confirm that I have the correct direction to point to the 28.2E satellite and typically my direction needs to be about 145degrees. At this point I will also try to lock the elevation position into the middle of the adjustment, and this is probably where I'm going wrong; my elevation needs to be about 25degrees.
3. Now try and use the needle/buzzer unit to find into the satellite by having a friend do the left/right adjustment on the dish (while the elevation is fixed in place onto the centre setting which I believe is 0degrees). This process has NOT been yielding a successful lock on the satellite no matter how much to the left/right I move the dish and no matter how much I adjust the sensitivity of the buzzer. By this I mean that the needle / buzzer do not respond to the movement of the dish at all.
4. As I haven't had any luck at this point with the buzzer (and suspecting a faulty buzzer unit), I'll then remove the buzzer and try to use the receiver menu system strength / quality reading to align the Dish. Teh receiver I'm referring to is a white sky+ box (amstrad) that I carry around with me which I know is working because it picks up the channels perfectly when I cannot to my own dish at home. I'll go into the settings to check the signal strength and quality. Here I will normally see zero strength and zero quality, and dish is not locked so I will then try to adjust the direction of the dish again.
5. When this all fails I cry, give up and go home.

I'm not a complete novice who's just decided one day to start putting dishes up for people. I have done this in the past with some success with the needle/buzzer unit. Once in the past I've even managed to align a dish without a buzzer unit. So I really couldn't understand why I'm having so many issues this time round. It's only been a year since I did the last dish so I can't be that rusty. Having written all this out, I believe I'm failing miserably because I'm not paying attention to the elevation angle. And I'm not doing this out of ignorance, I have watched a Youtube video advising that the dish should be flat, meaning if you put a spirit level against it (from top to bottom of dish face) you should get a level reading. Well this simply isn;t going to be possible be if you need to elevate the dish by some 25degrees. Here's the youtube videos in question:

Have a look at this one about 0:40s in:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO1XiVNmJXI


And have a look about 6:05 in until 6.45:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53w7QRNFmLY

Here the guy states that it's best to have dish elevation at zero because the sky elliptical mini-dishes have been cleverly engineered so that the elevation is correct even though the vertical elevation is at zero. Is this total bull-crap and is there where I'm going wrong?

Thanks for any further assistance you can give me to help me to achieve alignment, without use of an Enigma2 box.

[Joe_90]

Sky dishes normally are vertical as you would see from any examples nearby. The dish is "offset", meaning the LNB is angled when pointing at the dish, so it effectively looks upwards. That said, the elevation and azimuth are critical and can only be set properly with a signal meter. The slightest movement of the dish in elevation or azimuth can lose the signal. Zone 1 dishes are less "fussy" about pointing accuracy than Zone 2 dishes. The bigger the dish, the more accurate you need to be. If I was you I'd practise at home on say Astra 1 and Astra 2 and seeing how quickly you could switch between them. Then you might have better luck in a different location.

[twol]

Hi Twol

Thanks for the detailed instructions. The issue I have here is that I won;t have access to any enigma box at the places where I need to do the alignment.
So far out of the 3 dishes that I've put up (all around the London area) I haven't been able to get signal on any of them. I'm performing the alignment doing the following:

1. Use neighbouring dishes to get the approximate Azimuth direction to point the dish and choose the correct wall to fix the dish on to (zone 1 raven dish with zinwell quad lnb). I'll chose a location where there are no major obstacles in the line of sight to the satellite such as trees / buildings.
2. Erect the dish using spirit levels and also making sure that the spirit level on the lnb shows as level.
2. Use Dish Align smartphone app to confirm that I have the correct direction to point to the 28.2E satellite and typically my direction needs to be about 145degrees. At this point I will also try to lock the elevation position into the middle of the adjustment, and this is probably where I'm going wrong; my elevation needs to be about 25degrees.
3. Now try and use the needle/buzzer unit to find into the satellite by having a friend do the left/right adjustment on the dish (while the elevation is fixed in place onto the centre setting which I believe is 0degrees). This process has NOT been yielding a successful lock on the satellite no matter how much to the left/right I move the dish and no matter how much I adjust the sensitivity of the buzzer. By this I mean that the needle / buzzer do not respond to the movement of the dish at all.
4. As I haven't had any luck at this point with the buzzer (and suspecting a faulty buzzer unit), I'll then remove the buzzer and try to use the receiver menu system strength / quality reading to align the Dish. Teh receiver I'm referring to is a white sky+ box (amstrad) that I carry around with me which I know is working because it picks up the channels perfectly when I cannot to my own dish at home. I'll go into the settings to check the signal strength and quality. Here I will normally see zero strength and zero quality, and dish is not locked so I will then try to adjust the direction of the dish again.
5. When this all fails I cry, give up and go home.

I'm not a complete novice who's just decided one day to start putting dishes up for people. I have done this in the past with some success with the needle/buzzer unit. Once in the past I've even managed to align a dish without a buzzer unit. So I really couldn't understand why I'm having so many issues this time round. It's only been a year since I did the last dish so I can't be that rusty. Having written all this out, I believe I'm failing miserably because I'm not paying attention to the elevation angle. And I'm not doing this out of ignorance, I have watched a Youtube video advising that the dish should be flat, meaning if you put a spirit level against it (from top to bottom of dish face) you should get a level reading. Well this simply isn;t going to be possible be if you need to elevate the dish by some 25degrees. Here's the youtube videos in question:

Have a look at this one about 0:40s in:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO1XiVNmJXI


And have a look about 6:05 in until 6.45:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53w7QRNFmLY

Here the guy states that it's best to have dish elevation at zero because the sky elliptical mini-dishes have been cleverly engineered so that the elevation is correct even though the vertical elevation is at zero. Is this total bull-crap and is there where I'm going wrong?

Thanks for any further assistance you can give me to help me to achieve alignment, without use of an Enigma2 box.
Know where you are coming from as the last time I gave up in frustratration was on my son's UK Sky dish in the pouring rain :)
I guess what I would do (!) is beg, borrow,..., a useable 80 cm dish (thereby removing special Sky parabolic technicalities out of the loop ... and argument :) ) .. at least then you can use the normal tools without question.
Secondly, make sure you have the meter sensitivity turned right down otherwise you will not get any noticeable difference.... its easy to flip between 19.2E and 28.2E (and over several satellites) without noticing any difference if it is set too high .. I always set it so it almost doesn't beep and then sweep the expected sat area.
Lastly although Sky tuners receptivity is surprisingly good, the box spends an eternity adjusting to dish movements and is also pretty inaccurate. I have used a Sky box in Munich to set up and it was painfully slow.
SO although I hate to say it, if you have to do more than one dish, then the Amazon meter may be the best bet, although I think the one you have will only do DVB-S such as BBC1 SD

... access to an E2 receiver via WiFi would really help... last year I set up some friends dishes and just took an E2 receiver with me plugged it into their network and Wifi'ed between a laptop running the tool and the E2 receiver connected to their LAN and a LNB output cable. Obviously the receiver was all set up before and I just had to input the correct IP address into the laptop tool.

[gizmofreak]

@ twol
Thanks twol you are a true gentleman. I would love to have access to an 80cm dish and also a E2 box, but I won't have this for the dishes I'm currently erecting. Another issue with using an E2 box is that box would need to be plugged into the network, which will likely be a problem when only wifi will be available. I may just go with the Amazon meter and return it under distance trading laws if I find it isn't that good. It also doubles up as a CCTV camera tester as well which is good (albeit for analog cameras only).

@fat-tony
I also like your idea of switching between Astra 1 and Astra 2 for the sake of getting some practice. I have an E2 box at home (gigablue 800) that I can try this with. I'm guessing a normal sky-mini dish is capable of getting signal from Astra 1 if aligned correctly? And if I'm not mistaken the Astra 1 that you're referring to is the 19.2E ASTRA 1KR?

[twol]

@ twol
Thanks twol you are a true gentleman. I would love to have access to an 80cm dish and also a E2 box, but I won't have this for the dishes I'm currently erecting. Another issue with using an E2 box is that box would need to be plugged into the network, which will likely be a problem when only wifi will be available. I may just go with the Amazon meter and return it under distance trading laws if I find it isn't that good. It also doubles up as a CCTV camera tester as well which is good (albeit for analog cameras only).

@fat-tony
I also like your idea of switching between Astra 1 and Astra 2 for the sake of getting some practice. I have an E2 box at home (gigablue 800) that I can try this with. I'm guessing a normal sky-mini dish is capable of getting signal from Astra 1 if aligned correctly? And if I'm not mistaken the Astra 1 that you're referring to is the 19.2E ASTRA 1KR?
Go with the meter :) although also look on ebay... Quite a selection

[gizmofreak]

Go with the meter :) although also look on ebay... Quite a selection

I'm bidding on one on eBay right now. I'm more inclined to go with Amazon for warranty / returns but if I get the eBay cheap enough it'll warrant taking a risk.

One thing we're agreed on though with the Amazon one, the fact that it only has a DVB-S tuner (and not a DVB-S2 tuner) is that I won't be able to tune in any HD channels on the meter itself. This lack of a HD tuner should NOT impair any of the satellite 'FINDING' functionality though, right?

[twol]

I'm bidding on one on eBay right now. I'm more inclined to go with Amazon for warranty / returns but if I get the eBay cheap enough it'll warrant taking a risk.

One thing we're agreed on though with the Amazon one, the fact that it only has a DVB-S tuner (and not a DVB-S2 tuner) is that I won't be able to tune in any HD channels on the meter itself. This lack of a HD tuner should NOT impair any of the satellite 'FINDING' functionality though, right?
"should NOT impair any of the satellite 'FINDING' functionality though, right?" - Correct - although for me that would be a big problem, as fine tuning the real difficult ones (for me) like BBC1 HD on 2E or ITVHD on 2F need something that can lock onto them with DVB-S2....but for you if you can lock onto the normal FTA SD, you should get everything.

[Joe_90]

...

@fat-tony
I also like your idea of switching between Astra 1 and Astra 2 for the sake of getting some practice. I have an E2 box at home (gigablue 800) that I can try this with. I'm guessing a normal sky-mini dish is capable of getting signal from Astra 1 if aligned correctly? And if I'm not mistaken the Astra 1 that you're referring to is the 19.2E ASTRA 1KR?


The zone 1 dish should be ok for Astra 1 (yes - 19.2). If you do intend to use an 80cm dish, then you need to be more accurate in pointing it as I wrote in my previous post. Larger dishes have smaller "beam angles" (they see less of the sky) but provide more signal to the LNB. Almost all dishes are offset, so in UK and Ireland latitudes, they will seem to be vertical or nearly so, while the actual LNB is seeing 20'ish degrees of elevation. SKY dishes are slightly different in regards to the way the signal beam is reflected onto the LNB - it's more oval than circular. That means that standard (universal) LNBs will not work as well in a SKY dish or vice versa. In most cases they won't fit as a universal LNB has a 40mm collar. So, be aware that you may not be able to swap a SKY Zinwell LNB to an 80cm dish.

As regards the DVB-S finder - yes it will work on the majority of satellites as there are still plenty of DVB-S transponders. Over time, though, there will be fewer and fewer as the broadcasters can cram more channels onto DVB-S2, as it makes more economic sense to do so.

[gizmofreak]

"should NOT impair any of the satellite 'FINDING' functionality though, right?" - Correct - although for me that would be a big problem, as fine tuning the real difficult ones (for me) like BBC1 HD on 2E or ITVHD on 2F need something that can lock onto them with DVB-S2....but for you if you can lock onto the normal FTA SD, you should get everything.

Thanks, however there are non-HD channels on both the 2E and 2F transponders right?
Look if you think that it'd be better for me to go with a meter that does BOTH DVB-S and DVB-S2 then I might just do that, for example the one below:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/SATlink-WS-6933-Professional-Digital-Satellite/dp/B00MWQAEJW

This is one won't display the channels on screen but it does have both S and S2 capability. Let me know what you think.

I'm learning more and more by the minute, and have just donated to the forum to say thanks.

[Joe_90]

Astra 2A, 2E and 2F are separate satellites, but effectively are in the same place in the sky. They have a mix of DVB-S and DVB-S2 transponders so either meter will work. Having S2 capability makes it more future proof, but at those prices they are not going to be very high quality. I'm assuming you're not going to do dish installs for a living so whatever you like the look of :) Search online for a review of whatever model you take an interest in.

[gizmofreak]

The zone 1 dish should be ok for Astra 1 (yes - 19.2). If you do intend to use an 80cm dish, then you need to be more accurate in pointing it as I wrote in my previous post. Larger dishes have smaller "beam angles" (they see less of the sky) but provide more signal to the LNB. Almost all dishes are offset, so in UK and Ireland latitudes, they will seem to be vertical or nearly so, while the actual LNB is seeing 20'ish degrees of elevation. SKY dishes are slightly different in regards to the way the signal beam is reflected onto the LNB - it's more oval than circular. That means that standard (universal) LNBs will not work as well in a SKY dish or vice versa. In most cases they won't fit as a universal LNB has a 40mm collar. So, be aware that you may not be able to swap a SKY Zinwell LNB to an 80cm dish.

Thanks again fat-tony. I definitely won't be using an 80cm dish; I'll be using my zone 1 mini-dish (which has a zinwell quad LNB). And in fact I'm going to try re-aligning the dish from 28.2E (originally aligned by Sky engineer) to 19.2E tonight. I'll be doing this on my GB 800 SE box which is currently tuned into 28.2E. I have two questions about this:

1. I know we've talked about elevation and offset, and by the looks of things the sky mk4 mini-dishes apparently have an offset of of 24degrees. With my elevation for 28.2E needing to be 25degrees then the elevation arm should already be more or less set to zero I guess. Now the question, for 19.2E my elevation should be 28degrees, this would mean I need to move my elevation arm up buy around 3 degrees I guess, right?

2. Once I've aligned the dish to 19.2E, do I simply need to do a blind scan on the GB 800 SE box?

[Joe_90]

Standing facing the dish, you would need to move it left and up to move from 28.2 to 19.2. Three degrees is a very small upwards movement of the dish. No real point in doing blind scans of the satellites. It's very slow and really only for feed hunters. The satellite.xml file supplied with the ViX image will have all the transponders for the sats, so you just need to do a manual scan of the satellite. Or run ABM on the satellite and it will provide the major channels - much quicker than a manual scan.

[gizmofreak]

Standing facing the dish, you would need to move it left and up to move from 28.2 to 19.2. Three degrees is a very small upwards movement of the dish. No real point in doing blind scans of the satellites. It's very slow and really only for feed hunters. The satellite.xml file supplied with the ViX image will have all the transponders for the sats, so you just need to do a manual scan of the satellite. Or run ABM on the satellite and it will provide the major channels - much quicker than a manual scan.

Thanks again fat-tony. I have a GB 800 SE box with openvix latest image installed. I'm not all that familiar with scanning and the box is currently tuned into the 28.2.
AFTER I have aligned the dish to 19.2, what do I need to do in the menu in order to run ABM on the 19.2 satellite? Go to menu > Setup > Service searching > ????

[twol]

Thanks again fat-tony. I have a GB 800 SE box with openvix latest image installed. I'm not all that familiar with scanning and the box is currently tuned into the 28.2.
AFTER I have aligned the dish to 19.2, what do I need to do in the menu in order to run ABM on the 19.2 satellite? Go to menu > Setup > Service searching > ????
I wouldn't bother to use ABM eg Sky Deutschland is all encrypted not FTA.
SO having gone to Tuner and setup as on 19.2E, I would go to Service Searching, Manual scan, select tuner, single satellite, 19.2E, network scan Yes, clear before scan NO, Only freescan Yes Hit scan.
Then you can see if it is pulling in all the 19.2 FTA stations :) ... a lot.
Then TV button to go to bouquets(not the STB/TV button .. the other one!)
Select Satellites, select 19.2E, select something like ARD or Das Erste HD (SD/HD channels) should lock and show picture/sound
No need for bouquet ... you are not going to watch only prove you have aligned dish :)

[gizmofreak]

Fab - thanks. And is it easy to delete all the newly found channels once I've confirmed I get picture and sound on one of 19.2 channels?

[twol]

Fab - thanks. And is it easy to delete all the newly found channels once I've confirmed I get picture and sound on one of 19.2 channels?
Just switch your tuner back to 28.2E, your 28.2E bouquets should be untouched and just forget about the 19.2. ... or you can rescan on 28.2 if you like with clear before scan = Yes, but no need.

[gizmofreak]

Just switch your tuner back to 28.2E, your 28.2E bouquets should be untouched and just forget about the 19.2. ... or you can rescan on 28.2 if you like with clear before scan = Yes, but no need.

Hi twol (and fat-toni). This evening I put some felt tip marks on the elevation and azimuth adjustment nuts on my dish (to mark the positions) and then went about trying to find the 19.2 satellite as per your guidance. Having connected the basic buzzer/needle meter, I moved the dish a tiny amount to the approximately correct azimuth angle and the buzzing stopped. As soon as I moved the dish elevation angle slightly upwards the buzzing began again and I suspected I'd found 19.2. I then fine tunes using the buzzer (a bit fiddly but got it done) then I legged it downstairs to do the scan.

The scan on 19.2 (FTA only) completed VERY quickly and only came back with 6 channels (as shown in the below pic). Does this look ok to you to? I though I would get a lot more channels.
I've also used the suggested Krkadoni signal meter (see I am learning) and I'm getting 71% SNR / 73% AGC whilst on Das Erste.

Does this all seem ok to you? the signal reading and only 6 channels?

[Joe_90]

No pic!

You should get hundreds of FTA channels on 19.2 (most for phone sex lines :))

[judge]

Sounds like an android phone in your pocket while up a ladder would still do a much better job.

[Joe_90]

Sounds like an android phone in your pocket while up a ladder would still do a much better job.

Been there already - OP wants to buy expensive gear, when patience would do the trick!

[twol]

Hi twol (and fat-toni). This evening I put some felt tip marks on the elevation and azimuth adjustment nuts on my dish (to mark the positions) and then went about trying to find the 19.2 satellite as per your guidance. Having connected the basic buzzer/needle meter, I moved the dish a tiny amount to the approximately correct azimuth angle and the buzzing stopped. As soon as I moved the dish elevation angle slightly upwards the buzzing began again and I suspected I'd found 19.2. I then fine tunes using the buzzer (a bit fiddly but got it done) then I legged it downstairs to do the scan.

The scan on 19.2 (FTA only) completed VERY quickly and only came back with 6 channels (as shown in the below pic). Does this look ok to you to? I though I would get a lot more channels.
I've also used the suggested Krkadoni signal meter (see I am learning) and I'm getting 71% SNR / 73% AGC whilst on Das Erste.

Does this all seem ok to you? the signal reading and only 6 channels?
As mentioned you should have far more... There are quite a few (mon-sex!) German fta channels on 19.2
.....silly Q but Have you tried connectong a TV or monitor? To see if there is a pic? You could be on one of the in between sats or even gone as far as 13E (hotbird) which will also be quite strong...... Its the fun of aligning a sat dish:)

[twol]

Having looked quickly at "King of Sat" its more likely that you are on 23.5 .... Not many FTA TV channels

[gizmofreak]

Sorry guys here's the pic. Also would be good if a mod can update the title of the thread to include mention of 'dish alignment help'.

I definitely only got these 6 channels, maybe I should have tried scanning again.
I did check Dishpointer before moving the dish to check the general direction of 19.2, and it was to the left back corner of garden, and that's exactly where I got the buzzing from the meter, so I assumed I had it right.

43004

[Joe_90]

You're on 19.2 all right. The problem is that you have only scanned in one transponder apparently - 11836 H

You need to scan the entire satellite. Spend some time with the excellent manual created by Rob, one of our developers and testers. You will find it here - http://www.world-of-satellite.com/showthread.php?39144-VIX-Manual

This will show you the basic principles in setting up your receiver and help you understand transponders and channels and how to configure etc.

You're almost there.... keep on pluggin' ;)

[gizmofreak]

As mentioned you should have far more... There are quite a few (non-sex!)

That's a shame.... else I would have looked into putting up a separate dish for 19.2

:cool::cool::cool::cool:

[gizmofreak]

Sounds like an android phone in your pocket while up a ladder would still do a much better job.

This would be perfect, and I have a spare android phone that I've now installed the Krkadoni app onto. However the main issue with this is that you first need an E2 box connected to the network via ethernet, which may not be possible in some places. However today I'm going back to one of the places that I was struggling to perform alignment to 28.2; now being a lot more confident with using the simple buzzer/needle meter. If I manage to do it then I'll reconsider buying the more expensive sat finder, and that'll all be thanks to you guys!!!!!!!!!

[twol]

This would be perfect, and I have a spare android phone that I've now installed the Krkadoni app onto. However the main issue with this is that you first need an E2 box connected to the network via ethernet, which may not be possible in some places. However today I'm going back to one of the places that I was struggling to perform alignment to 28.2; now being a lot more confident with using the simple buzzer/needle meter. If I manage to do it then I'll reconsider buying the more expensive sat finder, and that'll all be thanks to you guys!!!!!!!!!
Thats the problem.... Confidence... Once you have done it a few times, you think whats the problem?... But it does take that amount of attempts to gt it right.

[gizmofreak]

Ok folks. Last night I went back to one of the dishes I was struggling to align with the needle/buzzer meter and had pretty much instant success. I had obviously practised on my own dish before hand going between 19.2 and 28.8 and I used the information from this thread along with a good tutorial I found written in an amazon review, on how to find the 28.2 using a needle / buzzer unit. I've placed the info from the tutorial below, having made some useful edits:

0. Attach satellite finder to both LNB and receiver / battery
1. point dish due east (horizontal adjustment) and elevation angle should be set to that given by http://www.dishpointer.com/
2. Reduce the meter's sensitivity to just above zero, at the point where it JUST stops buzzing
3. Turn dish slowly southwards (horizontal adjustment) until satellite finder beeps. Using this method the first dish it finds will be 28.2E
4. Turn down the gain until the satellite finder needle is on/around the 5db mark.
5. Turn dish slowly backwards and forwards in the horizontal plane until you find the strongest signal.
6. Tighten the horizontal adjustment.
7. Repeat step 5 but adjust the dish in the vertical plane.

I'll post this up somewhere in the appropriate part of the forum.

[Joe_90]

That's pretty much the standard process for adjusting a dish. It's almost impossible to use the markings on the dish to set the elevation angle correctly first time. They are only a rough guide to start with. After that you need to use a meter to get the azimuth and elevation exactly right. Either a meter directly connected to the dish or via the signal quality bar on the receiver. I normally use the second option with the assistance of the youngest son calling out the numbers. Good to know you've cracked the technique! Your next challenge will be with an 80cm dish or bigger!

[abu baniaz]

In my opinion, it is better to load a chanenl list onto receiver first. You can then select a channel and adjust the dish to tune to it.