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Magnetic will be roughly 216.6. Satfinder says 216.8 but what's .2 when you are reading a compass .

Look for a dish 500 dish near you. Now you see where 110-119W is. Next find 121W on your dish by go a little to the right of where the dish 500s are pointing. This has more power than 123W is easier to find. Once you have the barker channel. Turn the dish to the right until you just loose the signal. Like a 1/4 to 1/2 maybe. Then try a rescan.
A in-line signal meter helps. After you get something from 123W use your receiver to get the best signal and rescan. Also the elvations may be off a little?

What are you using for a dish?

bigjnsa said:

Man, am I really confused about this dish setup. I want to setup a stationary dish for G10R. Using the Sadoun's finder page:
http://sadoun.com/Sat/Installation/Satellite-Heading-Calculator.htm
I see G10R is 123 satellite west longitude. Plotting my area, San Antonio, I get Elevation 46.5, Azimuth 222.9 and LNBF +36.4.
Maybe I'm reading this wrong but, the graph below this shows magnetic declination. 123W is WAY off the map passed California. I'd have to point the dish due West to pick it up if I could.
Or, more confusing, do I just set the elevation to 46.5 and aim the dish to azimuth 222.9? Or, point the dish to 123W, elevation to 46.5, then fine tune with the azimuth?

Click to expand...

Making sense of the numbers

When you put your location in the calacualtor, it gives your loacation, San Antonio TX the map co-ordinates of Latitude 29.4 and Longitude 98.5. When you look at the map, select the latitude, 29.4 on the scale on the left and right side of the map. If you draw a horizontal (across left/right) line across the map, this line is 29.4 deg latitude line of the earth, or 29,4 units fron the equator. Now for your longitude. Look at the scale at the top and bottom of the map. Find 98.5 on the scale and draw a vertical line (up/down). Where these two lines interset, will be you home, San Antonio TX. Up to now we have only been using the numbers on the sides of the map. Now look at the curved lines on the body of the map. They will be marked with small numbers on a few of them. (not the numbers previously used, but the small numbers near the centre of the map) Some of the lines are not marked, but the 0, 5, and 10 are marked. (so between 0 and 5 are lines 1, 2, 3, and 4 etc) San Antonio TX is about half way between the 5 line and the next line to the left, or the 6 line. (I may have my location a little off) Lets say 5.5 These lines of the difference from compass reading, or magnetic reading and true reading show how much of a difference there is. These are always changing and the maps are usually updated every few years. Now from the notation at the bottom of the map, you need to subtract the value from the computed heading to get what the compass will read. So, the azimuth of 222.9 is the true reading that needs to be adjusted for the change in the varying magnetic of the earth. Your compass that points to the magnetic of the earth and does not know what the true should be. To pint at true of 222.9, your compass should be pointed at 222.9 - 5.5 = 217.4 because of this differece of the magnetic fields. This is what you use to point your dish at, 217.4 You also need to adjust the angle the dish points to the sky. This is the elevation. 0 deg elevation would meen you are pointing straight or level across the ground. 90 deg elevation you would be pointing straight up in the sky. Your elevation needs to be 46.5 degrees up from the ground, or just slightly past half way between pointing across the ground and straight up to the sky.
Now to make things more confusing for you, if you have an offset dish, (the LNBF or piece that you attach the coax cable to is not located in the centre of the dish, but to the bottom of the dish) the signal enters the dish from above the dish and is reflected out below and into the LNBF to pickup the signal. Think of this like a pool ball bouncing off a side cushion. It enters the dish at an angle, is reflected or bounced off the dish and leaves the dish at the same angle, but below.
Hopefully this makes sense to you now. It's a little confusing to begin with, but once you see why, it makes sense.

To recap, point your compas to 217.4deg, adjust your dish for it points up at an angle of 46.5 deg.

Now not to confuse things, but the satellite G10R is at 123 deg. (its physical location) On the map this would be the vertical (up/down) line at the left of the map at 123. (using the scale across the top and bottom) Since the satellites are over the equator, which is 0, the horizontal line (left/right) would be below the map if you continued the map down, (using the scale on the side) 50, 40 ,30, to 20, 10 and eventually 0. (don't confuse this with what your compass adjustments should be, or what your dish settings should be)