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Well I bought a Wally from Amazon through Pace international this last week. Yesterday (Friday) I decided to install it in place of my old Hopper3. I have been installing all my own sat equipment since the mid 2000s. Well the eastern arc dish had been harder to install than I remembered. I had one up on a pole for the eastern arc for the hybrid lnb. The other pole next to it was for the regular lnb for the eastern arc. Well the pole with that regular dish and lnb rusted out and broke off at the ground. I had installed both poles in 05 after hurricane Rita took out my old ones ,so they lasted 14 years in quickcrete. So I replaced the hybrid lnb with the regular lnb and cut off all the old lines not needed. I took the switch off the line and connected it straight through. I got my dish coming in at about 55 or higher. Then I decided that newer sat dish pan would go in place of the faded one that was covered in bird crap. I adjusted all the bolts and in the process accidentally adjusted the skew bolt. Well when I finished the change out of the pan my signals had dropped down to 30s. I tried to readjust the skew but it wouldn't come in any higher and it was getting to be evening.

So my wife was pissed and I ended up calling DISH and adding the DISH protect plan for free for 3 months and then $9.99 afterwards so I could get a tech out for $10.00 instead of $95.00. *I also set up an appointment for the tech to come out Saturday morning between 8am and 10am. I figured that they could peak it better with their super buddy meters instead of my cheapo $10.00 meter. Last thing I did before I went to bed was look on my account to see my appointment was on it.

Got up this Saturday morning and when 8am came I went and checked my account on line to see when he was coming. Well to my surprise my appointment had been cancelled. So I waited 15 minutes on the phone to talk to the Cancellation dept. since I figured they could get a tech to still come out on the only day I was off to be there. Got some guy who listened to me, but made no apology for their cancellation. He said he would call the field tech supervisor for my area and get him to call me back with in 3 hrs to set up a time TODAY to come out. Would take 5 minutes to peak it. Well after 3 hours of waiting and no calls or techs showing up at my house I said Hell with it and got my $10.00 meter out and an old 211k receiver I wasn't using to use it for my satellite strengths. I got my old eastern arc directions for a dish I had added years ago. I set it for the proper skew 55 and then elevation was at 46 just like the directions said. No difference in strength.

So I decided to go online and look up some other people who had problems with this install. I also looked at DISH website and they give you basic directions on installing the eastern arc 1000.2 sat dish. Turns out the instructions were different on their website from the written ones that came with my old sat dish. Instead of setting the skew first like the written ones said , the online said you need to set the elevation first for 72.7 sat and then adjust the skew. So I set my elevation at 49 and my 72.7 strength came in at 55 on 21 transponder. The directions said skew was 46 but I couldn't get 61.5 sat to come in. Then I remembered that if I used port 2 for 61.5 strength it would measure that one . So I adjusted the cable to the 2nd port and it came in at like 65 strength. So I locked it in and ran a check switch and then let it download the guide ,dvr timers etc. Took me about 2hours using trial and error method.

I then checked each transponder on 72.7 sat and I got at least 50 to 60 tops . I checked the 61.5 sat by transponders and got between 65 and 75 on all transponders except spot beams out of my area. I got better signal strengths than the old hybrid dish had with the hopper that I had DISH come out and peak since I wasn't sure back in 2016 if the signal strength was high enough. So I went back inside and cancelled the DISH protect plan and the new appointment he had setup for Sunday between 8am and 10am after he told me they would come out TODAY. Good thing I have a little do it yourself ingenuity or I would be looking at a blank tv screen right now.

This will be the last receiver I get on my main DISH account. I am really close to cutting it entirely and wanted to save the ridiculous $15.00 dvr fee from the Hopper and I didn't even have sat locals anymore to save the $12.00 a month, so the fee was for really nothing now. So I paid $180.00 a year just to have the Hopper . I have had one since 2012 but I really don't need 16 tuners because I really don't watch much cable tv. I watch more network tv than anything else and the 4 tuner Tablo dvr I got last summer with life time membership, does the job of Prime time Anytime and it comes with full commercial skip on most shows , except news and sports shows. The Wally has NO DVR fee ,since I had the 211k on my account the last decade so the dvr software was paid for. The Flex pack on our DISH account is just right for my wife and her shows. She doesn't want to use the online apps for most tv shows and prefers DISH for her tv viewing. She is really a technophobe. I use sling tv blue + dvr + news pack for most of my viewing away from home for news channels and other cable shows. WE get three streams at a time on this account.

But I can see why DISH is losing satellite subs when they pull this kind of stuff on a 23 year customer with their company and three DISH accounts. Shouldn't happen to anyone and it made me really angry. I am just glad I was able to fix it myself and the signals are higher than when the DISH tech did come out a few years back.