azimuth position

[spliff]

Hi there I just joined the forum and this is my first post. I couldn't find a welcome section to give my first post in.
I'm not a sat guy and need some very basic advice . I fitted a new dish last year with no probs. But lately my satellite signal has been all over the place. I set my dish in line with the way my neibours looked. I was getting over 70% strength and quality. Now it drops way down and ill move the dish slightly then it's good for a week or so then the same again. I decided to read up on what to do. I realised the azimuth position is very important so I installed an app (satfinder) which said I should set it to 142° to get sky UK channels . I moved my dish to that point and it appears to be pointing much further right than my neibours. Is it possible that angle is wrong for my area . My dish was at about 80 -90 ° when it was working fine. Cheers in advance

 

[spliff]

Sorry I meant to put this in the dish alignment section. Can someone move it please

 

[Mickha]

It sounds like you have a fixed dish so forget any reference to Azimuth.
Position your dish, to get the strongest signal quality possible, then tighten all the brackets, trying not to disturb the dish. For extra signal quality you need to skew, rotate, the LNB slightly.

 

[spliff]

Yes it is a fixed dish. So If I'm getting above 70% strength and quality then that should be fine? What I don't get is if we don't have high winds just now and I've made sure everything on the dish is tight . Why does the signal keep dropping . I'll try to realign the dish again and check every bolt there is. I was concidering one of those analogue meters from eBay for a fiver to make it easier or are they no good

 

[Terryl]

I would not rely on the position of your neighbors dish to position yours.

I use hXXp://www.dishpointer.com to find the birds, enter your location then select the satellite, this will come up with a map, zoom into your location and it will give you a line on the map to help you set the azimuth (direction the dish needs to be pointed) and elevation, (how far above the horizon the dish needs to be pointed) it will also include any skew adjustments. (adjusting the dish like a steering wheel)

Now, the "S" measurements mean very little, all this tells you is that you have a connection to the LNB, and it's within the design limits of your receiver, although a low "S" can be an indication of problems with the coax, switch, LNB or connections .

The "Q" measurements are what you need to look at, the higher the "Q" the better the dishes alignment to the satellite.

You can have an "S" as low as 40%, and the "Q" can be as high as 99%, (not possible in all cases and satellites) and this being a digital signal you don't need every bit of "Q" that you can get.

Now if you can't get a good enough "Q" to provide an error free picture (no drop outs or pixilation) then you may need a bigger dish, to see waht sized dish you may need at your location use satbeams.com, select the satellite your looking at from the list, then select the little globe, this will give you a map with the satellites footprint, zoom into your location and click on it, this will give you an idea on what sized dish you may need.

 

[spliff]

superb thanks for the help, i now know a lot more than i did when i came here.
by the sounds of it i may have a connection problem at the dish because when my Q is dropping down so is my S.
ill get it realigned then check all connections to the LNB

 

[Terryl]

Check the connections first, you may not need to realign the dish.