Moving a dish

mulls74

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I am looking for a bit of help with moving my dish. For a while, I have been getting 1W channels but it looks like those days may be over for a while. With this in mind, I am thinking of switching to an ART sub for my footballing needs.
I have a fixed dish on a paving slab down the garden. It is a 90cm dish with invacom lnb which was getting all the Thor channels when I lived near London. I now live near Southport and it was still bringing in the strong Thor channels with 80% signal strength.
I took the hugely scientific step of shoving the paving slab in the general direction of east and amazingly I managed to find Hotbird 13e with my first go. However, I am not sure how to do the fine tuning. With some channels, it picks up 50 per cent signal quality but for some others, including the ART ones, it is 20 per cent. I know they are encrypted so I can't watch at the moment anyway but the FTA channels around them freeze up when trying to watch. I have tried nudging the dish either way but 20 per cent quality is the best I can get.
I know there are different elevations for different satellites and would appreciate some help about how to best set up my dish to maximize the Hotbird signal.
Or am I mad to try this without professional assistance.
Thanks
 

daveenty

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Hiya m8

I think your best/quickest solution would be to beg, borrow or steal a sat finder meter.
Just plug it in and swing the dish gently left -right, + up - down.
This will help you with the fine tuning, which you're going to need for ART channels!
your 90cm dish will be OK though, getting it here on an 80, no probs.
 

mulls74

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Thanks for the info. I took the scientific step of sticking a bit of wood underneath the dish to change the elevation and hey presto, 70% signal strength. Not very sturdy but less than the £100 I was quoted to come and realign it- just prey for a storm-free few months now!
 

rolfw

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The dish should have a bracket with a couple of bolts to easily adjust the elevation, the lump of wood should not be required. ;)
 

mulls74

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Cheers Rolf, things are a bit steadier now!
 

Analoguesat

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Mulls - think of the satellites being in a big inverted arc with 1W being at the top of the arc, and elevations slowly dropping as you move either side of 1W. The difference in elevation for an LNB between 13E and 19E is about half an inch (very roughly and totally unscienrtifically).
 
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