What in the world are you talking about?! I've heard some really strange ways of defining look angles, but this one tops them all. The general direction of Florida?! Is that how you read a map and calculate direction? The signal from space doesn't come straight into the dish surface? Where did you get THAT from? OF COURSE the signal from the satellite goes straight to the satellite dish. It doesn't travel AROUND obstacles, that's the most ridiculous thing I have every heard. You need to read up a bit on basic satellite communications before giving out advice. Sorry to be harsh, but that's the type advice that just makes things worse.sat4me said:All you really need to know for a GENERAL-BASIC rule, is the 61.5 satellites are approx. 23,300 miles above the equator and the VOOM dish will need to point in the GENERAL direction of Flordia, infact a little east of Flordia out over the Atlantic.
On the east coast the dish elevation of the line of site varies from 40-50 degrees.
On the West Coast, 9-15 degrees, so you west coasters may have more line-of-site issues than the east-coasters.
Also, the actual signal from "space" doesn't come straight into the dish surface, you will actually have approximatly an additional 20 degrees to have for the signal to "make-it" over any obsticals.
Hope that makes it easy to BASICALLY know what direction your VOOM installer needs to point the dish.
A little clarification!!!......as to the signal not going "straight" into the dish. I am pretty sure what he meant is that the dish does not point exactly to the satellite. On a Cband dish which is round and the feedhorn is exactly in the center, you need to point directly at the satellite. HOWEVER..on Voom and just about every other DBS service they use an offset feedhorn which lowers the look angle. For example here on the west coast, if you look at the face of my dish, it appears to be pointing towards the ground. The signal hits the top portion of the dish and then bounces towards the feedhorn at the bottomM Law said:What in the world are you talking about?! I've heard some really strange ways of defining look angles, but this one tops them all. The general direction of Florida?! Is that how you read a map and calculate direction? The signal from space doesn't come straight into the dish surface? Where did you get THAT from? OF COURSE the signal from the satellite goes straight to the satellite dish. It doesn't travel AROUND obstacles, that's the most ridiculous thing I have every heard. You need to read up a bit on basic satellite communications before giving out advice. Sorry to be harsh, but that's the type advice that just makes things worse.