1-Does the dish have to be fine tuned for every sat? And if so, won't that disarrange</SPAN> the rest of the sat's already in sync
Cyunquer,
I don't know what city you live nearest, so I will just pick Newark for an example to help explain some items for you.
There are three limitations as to how much of the satellite "field" or arc that you can use.
First, the
curvature of the earth limits the maximum satellite arc that you can possibly view to approximately +/- 76° away from your site's longitude. Any satellite beyond that will be below the horizon and you just cannot see it no matter what. So, if you were in Newark, NJ with a longitude of 74°W, then with a FIXED point dish you could
theoretically view satellites with orbital positions between 2°E through 150°W.
When you attach a H-H motor, you decrease the usable span of the satellite arc because the motor and mechanical brackets have
physical limitations as to how far they can turn. This is approximately +/- 67°. Therefore, from Newark, NJ the maximum satellite field with a H-H motor would be from 7°W to 141°W using DiSEqC 1.2 motor positioning.
Now, if you adopt the use of USALS motor positioning, there is a
software limitation within the USALS program that tightens this arc further. This limitation is aproximately +/- 60°. Therefore, from Newark, NJ your maximum satellite field would be from 14°W to 134°W.
As TRON mentioned, not all satellites beam a signal that can be received in your location. The satellite might be within your range of LOS, but if they don't project a signal your way, it doesn't do you any good to look for it.
Now to address the question of "fine tuning" the dish and motor assembly for each satellite. This depends upon what you mean by fine tuning. If you are using DiSEqC 1.2 motor positioning, you do have to LOCATE each satellite and store their position in the motor's memory. That is not exactly "fine tuning", it is actually just "locating" them on the arc.
When using USALS, you don't have to locate each individual satellite in this manner. The USALS program does this for you.
However, in either method of motor control, DiSEqC or USALS, you need to have your dish and motor assembly calibrated to the arc. Since you have achieved reception from 30.0°W and 97.0°W with fair quality signal levels, you must have your dish and motor aligned fairly well to track the arc. It may not be as optimimum as it can be yet, but you are covering a wide portion of the arc.
The other satellites in between 30 and 97 may be sparse. You should be able to acquire signals from 61.0W Amazonas, 63.1°W Telstar 14, 72.0°W AMC 6, maybe 74.0°W Horizons 2 if they are broadcasting anything (mostly sporadic feeds nowadays), 83.0°W AMC 9, 85.0°W AMC 16, 87.0°W AMC 3 and 89.0°W Galaxy 28. I think you should also be able to acquire signals from 99.0°W Galaxy 16, 101.1°W SES 1, 103.0°W AMC 1, 107.3°W Anik F1, 123.0° Galaxy 18 and 124.9°W AMC 21.
If you cannot dial in on these sats that I listed above, then you probably need to fine tune your dish and motor to the arc. But NOT to any one particualr satellite. As you pondered early on, if you try to peak the signal for one specific sat, you may degrade the signal from another satellite. You are right on there! What you need to do is start from the near center of your arc (somewhere near 74W) and work your way out towards the ends of the arc. In the guide that I posted, I paraphrase a procedure to do that.
There are probably more sats in there that you should get, I just browsed quickly through the ones that I found active right now. Other sats are either not beaming signals to you, are not broadcasting 24/7, are encrypted or are broadcasting in a different band.
RADAR