I'm also thinking that, well am I not supposed to FIRST lock the dish onto the true south satellite ??
Maybe I'm having trouble because I'm skipping steps?
Finding your true south satellite is the first thing you did and should have done, but it IS sort of arbitrary on what you do with that info once found. After all, once found it's hard to loose, it's important that you locate the true south for your location since that will be the peak of your arc, everything after that is just tweaking to insure that you aren't off by as much as a half degree. And believe me, a half degree off in either direction is a big thing.
This is why I kept insisting that you do the pull/push test.
Once you find your true south, and it can be different for everyone, even living as close as a couple of miles apart, then you are on your way to realizing the value of your entire system.
Imagine you only had the compass you were using to locate your true south. It is a magnetic compass, it can vary widely from spot to spot even in your own back yard, so it is only a STARTING point on where to aim your dish. Then there is the difference between True and Magnetic South. You will often see both mentioned in whatever place you went to to find where to point your dish. And as much as 7 to 10 degrees difference between them. If you look again at dish pointer, you will see that they mention BOTH in trying to help you point your dish.
Now, since you probably don't have $50K to spend on instruments that will guide you in finding YOUR true south, we aim the dish as well as we can, and then try tweaking the dish to line it up as accurately as possible.
THAT'S why I kept telling you about the push/pull test.
Since there is at least one station you can pull in from that satellite, HQx (which ever number it is, I don't remember), put your dish aimed as well as you can on that satellite, find the strongest channel, do the push/pull and adjust your dish as needed. THEN, scan your satellite again, and find a weaker station and again do the push/pull test, and readjust your dish. Once you have the signal AS STRONG as you can get it, THEN lock everything down and do the test one last time. If there is no change, at this point you can rest assured you are DEAD on that satellite, and you shouldn't need to adjust the dish again unless something catastrophic happens that really whips your dish around.
NOW you can go to your lnb and start tweaking that. Rotate in in either direction, it really won't matter now that you have it lined up properly for horizontal, everything else will follow suite. Do this in very small increments, don't over shoot your goal by rotating it too far.
Once you have THAT as well as can be done, THEN is the time to start adjusting the depth of your setting for the LNB, in and out. Start with the bottom of the LNB about level, this is an arbitrary place, it doesn't have to be exact, but start either in as far as you can go, or out as far as you can go. Somewhere in the middle will be the BEST place for the LNB. Once you have that done, lock it in place but NOT TOO TIGHT. You can 'dimple' the LNB if you put that screw in too tight, then you'll have to turn the LNB around 90 degrees and start all over. Also, you may want to shim the LNB so it won't move as you tighten the bolt/screw that holds it in place. I had to do that. As I slightly tightened the LNB it would wander and tilt. Be careful, a misplaced LNB will look like heck on your TV and ruin all your hard work.
Something to be aware of here, on the LNB, do ONE thing at a time, first adjust the skew so that is as high a signal as you can get, THEN adjust the depth of the LNB so that you get as high a signal as you can. Do this ONE step at a time. Trying to adjust both the skew and depth can really confuse you, so take it slow, even if you get a weeks worth of exercise climbing that ladder up and down all in one day. THIS will pay great dividends in the long run.
One last thing, something to look forward to. You have mentioned hearing people talking about the "S2" signals coming from that satellite. All the RTV/RTN (never know what to call them) channels are S2, your coolsat will not get those. It won't even let you know they are there, so forget about them for the time being. You also mentioned wanting to get an Openbox since you have read so much about them. Well, once you get the Openbox all you will have to do is disconnect the Coolsat by turning it off from the back, unplug it and disconnect any connections going to your TV (or whatever you have connected), then connect the Openbox then plug it in and turn it on, scan your satellites and bingo, no more re-aligning to be done. And you will LOVE what you get from this satellite then.
I hope you'll let us know exactly how all this works FOR you. Don't get discouraged, you are SO close, it's JUST a matter of tweaking now, nothing more, you are almost there.
Oh, one last little thing. You don't really ~need~ a bird dog meter for this, once you get the dish working, we can guide you on some fun ways of finding and locating satellites in the sky. Lets go back to trying to keep it simple, do ONE step at a time, slowly, that way you won't get too confused.
And all of this is just a prelude to doing all of this again, but in more sensible steps for the big dish.
Photto
