Interesting thread, though I am now more confused on alignment process.
This is my current understanding of the process:
1) Set dish skew to 90 degrees
2) Align the dish to central satellite by adjusting azimuth and elevation
3) Roughly set the correct skew on the dish
4) At this point I lose the central satellite. I get it back by adjusting the azimuth.
5) Now find the satellites on the extremes (5w and 39e in my case) by moving the LNB along the rail
6) Fine tune by adjusting skew of the dish and azimuth(???) until signal maxes out on both extremes. Or just skew? Or just azimuth?
7) Throw the dish in the bin
OR do I not adjust the skew of the dish at all, leaving it at 90 degrees... but then it wouldn't follow the arc, so that can't be right.
5e isn't usable - a bit of rain and it disappeared, especially now in the evening when it's weaker anyway. So that LNB will probably be going away. I am not sure I can stretch between 42e and 5w without modifications to the rail - 39e is right on the edge and 5w isn't far off it on the other side. I would like to get slightly better signal from 39e - so may need to adjust it a bit.
Maybe I am still doing something wrong but overall the dish is a bit underwhelming
The effective dish size seems to match this diagram posted by
@RimaNTSS many years ago:
In theory, if I set 9e as the central satellite, 1w and 5e will come in well enough, as it will be equivalent to a 95cm-ish dish within that 20 degree range... but I lose 39e and there's not much beyond 5W until I hit 30W, which wouldn't be possible!
Argh!
Think I'll work on the LNB changer tomorrow on the Laminas...