Hello everyone. I just got my slimline dish in today and was trying to get it set up. I set up my 3 lnb dish with no problem and found a signal right away. I got my slimline one mounted already and wired into my H20 reciever. I tried aiming it to the 101 satellite and wasn't able to pick anything up. It sucks because I don't have a signal meter (and can't afford a nice one just to set up 1 dish). Is there any trick to this that anyone can tell me? I set the tilt to 0 and pointed the azimuth to about 189 degrees which I calculated from a website. My zip code is 51240. My view is the southern sky is clear as day with nothing in the way so that is not the problem. I am just finding that this dish is much harder to find the signal. It got dark tonight and will continue tomorrow. Again, any advice would be great. If anyone has a signal meter that I could borrow, that would be awsome as well. I can give a deposit for it and send it back when complete.
you can use the reciever just fine to aim one of these things. all a signal meter is is a reciever thats convienient to move and doesnt need a tv.
first off you need to ditch the azimuth you got from the website. the azimuth from the website and even the one on the screen for the h20 is irrelevent. your azimuth will be wht it will be when your all said and done.
you do in fact need to set the dishs correct elevation and skew as per the aiming instructions on the h20. if you do not set the elevation and skew or even just the skew alone your most likely not going to get anything. this is what your current problem is, you have your skew/tilt whatever you want to address it by set at 0. i know for my area (pittsburgh) the skew is 67 an its almost dead perfect. once you get those two set correctly then start swinging it back and forth to look for 101. your basically going backwards right now. the fine tuning part comes later, dont even worry about it for right now. and i you have a d10 or d11 your better off using that meter to point the dish over te h20. the h20's read alot lower by nature and your going to end up thinking your screwing it up when your really not.
look these things are easy to setup if you dont let them scare you. you may be thinking i say that because ive done a hundred of them but i got my first one done way back when in about 10 minutes. it'll take joe homeowner longer cause he's using his tv but all the same principles apply. if ya have anymore questions just come back and post them, i'll help ya as much as i can.