Aligning motorized dish without Zenith sat

[k4otl]

This may seem like an exercise in self-inflicted headaches, and I haven't found any info on this, but here goes:
My location isn't great for "looking" at my southernmost sat, which is 82W. I pretty much can't put my C band dish where it can see that part of the arc due to trees (well I could but it'd be 5' off the road, no thanks). For Ku it's not as bad, I can put a motorized dish to see 82W, but it wouldn't see anything west of 110W at best. For C band I chose the location of the pole where I can see 97W-135W (possibly 139W, again, trees). Maybe in the winter I could see to 91W, but not sure.

So, how would one go about aligning a motorized dish when you can't "see" your zenith sat? My idea of doing this is to align the dish's azimuth at the zenith sat, get the elevation/declination as close as one could manage, then drive to the closest sat receivable, if it's right the first time, hooray.
If not, then either adjust azimuth or elevation (you all tell me, I'm thinking elev) till I get a known TP. Then keep motoring through the arc that's visible to see if it lines up, if not, tweak (?) az/elev/declination?

It seems that this would be possible, and that I'm not the only one who has run into this. I don't have the dish on the pole yet anyway and will set it up fixed to start with, then change out for the actuator later (although plans can change!)

 

[primestar31]

This may seem like an exercise in self-inflicted headaches, and I haven't found any info on this, but here goes:
My location isn't great for "looking" at my southernmost sat, which is 82W. I pretty much can't put my C band dish where it can see that part of the arc due to trees (well I could but it'd be 5' off the road, no thanks). For Ku it's not as bad, I can put a motorized dish to see 82W, but it wouldn't see anything west of 110W at best. For C band I chose the location of the pole where I can see 97W-135W (possibly 139W, again, trees). Maybe in the winter I could see to 91W, but not sure.

So, how would one go about aligning a motorized dish when you can't "see" your zenith sat? My idea of doing this is to align the dish's azimuth at the zenith sat, get the elevation/declination as close as one could manage, then drive to the closest sat receivable, if it's right the first time, hooray.
If not, then either adjust azimuth or elevation (you all tell me, I'm thinking elev) till I get a known TP. Then keep motoring through the arc that's visible to see if it lines up, if not, tweak (?) az/elev/declination?

It seems that this would be possible, and that I'm not the only one who has run into this. I don't have the dish on the pole yet anyway and will set it up fixed to start with, then change out for the actuator later (although plans can change!)

I more than once have setup a polar mount, by going out late at night and sighting in the polar star to get the polar axis near perfect.

Now I just do it by looking up local solar noon time, going out to the dish with an atomic clock, and pounding in a long tall stake piece of pipe perfectly leveled some feet away from the dish pole to line up with its shadow at exact solar noon for the site. That stake and satellite pole will then ALWAYS match perfect with True South if you use them as sight points.

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