I have a Starband dish (Channel Master 74E type) with skewable mount. Over the weekend I removed the factory LNB which is very heavy with a transmitter included and replaced it with a Sadoun KL2 dual linear LNB, attaching it to the LNB arm with a fabricated metal plate and stainless steel hose clamp. I had a lot of trouble finding G25 at 97W. I set the skew at +24, then started panning left and right, adjusting the elevation, panning again. This went on for a couple of hours, then I gave up on that approach. I had a compass several feet in front of the dish, pointed the dish as accurately as I could in the right compass direction, then started doing blind scans with my Mercury II at different elevations. I finally scanned in some transponders and some TV stations which turned out to be for SatMex 6 at 113W. This really surprised me because 113 and 97 are 16 degrees apart. I've pointed regular non-skewable dishes successfully a number of times now and have never been even close to that far off on compass direction. The other thing that puzzles me was how I was able to receive SatMex 6 which needs a skew of something like +40 here when I had the skew set at +24 for G25.
I fine tuned the elevation and azimuth to peak 113, then working from there knew I had to increase elevation by 8 degrees and move left 16 degrees to get G25 and I finally got it. G25 is at 39 elevation from here (Philadelphia area) but the elevation on the dish mount read 46, off by a good 7 degrees. And yes, the mast was plumb, it was mounted on the side of a rickety pallet used as part of my compost bin but I had used a coat hanger and turnbuckle to jack the mast with that heavy dish on it up to plumb in all directions. Maybe the non-factory jury-rigged LNB changed the needed elevation for the dish.
But my basic question for y'all is this: when you have a dish with a skewable mount, does that change the compass direction you point the LNB arm at? With the dish skewed, does that change the angle the signal comes in at?
Thanks much on any advice.
I fine tuned the elevation and azimuth to peak 113, then working from there knew I had to increase elevation by 8 degrees and move left 16 degrees to get G25 and I finally got it. G25 is at 39 elevation from here (Philadelphia area) but the elevation on the dish mount read 46, off by a good 7 degrees. And yes, the mast was plumb, it was mounted on the side of a rickety pallet used as part of my compost bin but I had used a coat hanger and turnbuckle to jack the mast with that heavy dish on it up to plumb in all directions. Maybe the non-factory jury-rigged LNB changed the needed elevation for the dish.
But my basic question for y'all is this: when you have a dish with a skewable mount, does that change the compass direction you point the LNB arm at? With the dish skewed, does that change the angle the signal comes in at?
Thanks much on any advice.