Philex Dish, no elevation numbers...

My Satellite Setup
~HTPC~
AMD Phenom x4 9500
4GB PC3200 DDR2 RAM
Hauppauge Nova TD-500
Pinnacle 7010ix DVB-T/DVB-S

Philex STB & 45cm dish + Quad LNB (salvaged from a Sky dish)
My Location
nr Newcastle
Hey guys!

Satellite noob here! My dish is up and just needing to be aligned correctly, but when I went to set the elevation, the marks have no numbers. My area needs an elevation of 21.7. How would I use the marks? are they a standard mark?

Cheers guys!
 
Welcome to the forum RitchieTheBrit,

Dish elevation scales are normally not accurate enough to go on.

What satellite are you aligning to (assume 28e) ?
 
Just swivel the dish to the right elevation to get a a signal, the marks are useful to know how much roughly you have just moved it by.
 
Yup, I want to get 28.2e to keep the girlfriend happy, until I can have a look at alternatives. Its more for HD from BBC and ITV really.

At the moment, I am picking up a 70% signal, with no quality, so I guess the dish is pointing at something, just not Astra 2A. I haven't actually tried aligning it yet, I was waiting for the better half to come back from a trip so she can watch the signal as I move the dish.

I pointed it in roughly the same direction as the local Sky dishes point, so I guess it's just going to be a matter of tweaking it. I was going to do it this evening, but the heavens opened! Sods law, blistering heat while I mount it, chucking down when I want to align it!
 
Just make sure you haven't got one of those funny LNB's that require a 45 degree skew
 
Nah, the LNB is a quad that I took from my brothers unused Sky dish. I'm starting to think that maybe I should have just derusted and sprayed his dish. It looks far easier to align.

This Philex dish is pole mounted, and when I loosen the bracket, its going to slide up and down, making small adjustments a pain.

I may get some paint and drawbolts this week and give it a try.
 
Can you post up some pics?

A sky lnb is designed to provide optimum illumination for a sky dish face.

if your using an offset dish you really want a universal lnb for best results.

The sky lnb will work but not as well as a universal.

You should be able to slacken Philex dish clamp-enough so you can move it around without it slipping. Move the dish east to west slowly in slight movements,if you complete a sweep E to W and still no signal, alter elevation slightly and repeat process.

If you cant see TV screen crank that volume up connect reciever to dish and you should hear channel when the dish is in the in right positiion, once you get a signal you can tweek for optimum results. :)
 
RitchieTheBrit said:
This Philex dish is pole mounted, and when I loosen the bracket, its going to slide up and down, making small adjustments a pain.

I may get some paint and drawbolts this week and give it a try.

On a small dish like yours it shouldn't be a pain at all. You do the U-bolts up tight so it's firm, then undo it a bit so that you can just about swivel it.
 
Robbo said:
On a small dish like yours it shouldn't be a pain at all. You do the U-bolts up tight so it's firm, then undo it a bit so that you can just about swivel it.

Hey guys! I wanted to avoid digging into the paint too much Robbo, as I live near the coast. things rust quickly around here!

Anyway, success! Once it stopped raining long enough to get the ladders out I mucked around with the better half watched the signal quality bar. I thought I wasn't going to get any joy, so I loosened the elevation off slightly and it dopped forward a little, bingo, got a signal! It is actually pointed slightly downward, I guess the LNB offset was more than I thought. It's not showing 70% strength and around 63-64% strength.

Posting this, I have realised that I have forgotten to set the LNB skew. Doh! Will that show up via the signal quality as well? It needs to be -11.6.
 
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