Aligning dish without a finder?

alan767

OK I was up on my roof last night using a satalite finder a sparks mate had but no joy.

The receiver is a triax ST- HD 537.

If open the manual tuning screen frequency is 10700, symbol rate 27500
LNB polarisation vertical.

I know astra 2 is at 28degrees E.

Lets say if I go up on the roof and slowly move the dish [sky J4S] from right to left and alter the tilt with someone just watching the signal strength and signal quality bars on the screen will these indicate when I've located a satallite?

These bars are currently at 0% obviously.

Does the blue button on the remote that "starts scan" need to be pressed first in order to make those bars show a reading if I get lucky and find a satallite?

All input welcome

Thanks

MBSnr

Try dishpointer.com - even if your location isn't in high res sat photography to line up on a feature, it will give you the magnetic reading for a compass - it's approx 142 Degrees for anywhere in Ireland. Dish elevation is approx 20 degrees. The back of the dish may be marked with degree lines....but probably not on a Sky one.

EDIT:Try searching on 10714 H 22000 5/6 - Should be all the Channel 4 regions.

Freqs here - http://en.kingofsat.net/pos-28.2E.php

alan767

Cheers I'll give that a go now! Great link btw thanks

Atlantic Dawn

Another tip is get a mate to plug your box in to their dish, tune the channels in and then reconnect back to your dish, then when finding you can be sure signal strength is correct as you will see picture and can adjust until perfect.

alan767

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

Another tip is get a mate to plug your box in to their dish, tune the channels in and then reconnect back to your dish, then when finding you can be sure signal strength is correct as you will see picture and can adjust until perfect.

Excellent Atlantic..... Next door neighbours have the same receiver and dish so I can certainly do this. Once the receiver is tuned in this way and I re-connect to my own dish do I then need to have the manual satallite tuning screen open when I'm adjusting the dish alignment with a scan running [and someone watching the screen]

Ger Roe

No.

If trying to align from a selected tuned in channel, don't run a scan at the same time. Channels can only be scanned and loaded when the dish is in the correct position and therefore receiving a signal from the correct satellite.

Select a known good channel (eg BBC London) and move the dish in and around the expected position until you see a picture. Move slowly - there is a short time delay between dish movement and screen display. Once you have a picture displayed, you can switch to the quality & signal level on the channel for final adjustment of the dish.

Good luck.

alan767

Thanks Ger!

FREETV

Align your dish to the weakest transponder frequency to get the best average readings, Vintage TV is on a weak transponder. Lining the dish up to BBC One is on a different satellite and the dish will be slightly out for the others and pictures will be breaking up and the stations will be gone completely in persistent rain or a rain shower. Then skew your LNB to about the six o clock position until you get the highest reading on the inbuilt signal meter of the dish or the satellite meter.

JHet

I would say just to get the initial signal, stick it onto a strong tp like Channel 4 or 5 standard definition. These are normally very strong. Then stick it on a weak one like as you say Vintage TV. A lot of those FTA music channels are very weak.

alan767

Great info ppl thanks