Dishing up some aggravation...

[Ponduke]

Hey, Newbie here with a question. I currently have the 622 HD DVR and have a problem. Here's the deal. My receiver is hooked to two dished. The Superdish which is used to receive satellites 110 and 119, and the Dish 500 which is for satellite 129. I'm getting 110 and 119 fine. My problem is the dish 500 and sat 129. The installer didn't mount it properly and some strong winds blew it off target so I built a stronger mounting and can now not find the sat. I called Dish and was told finding it was virtually impossible without the high tech signal meter used by their installers and wanted to charge me to come out and do it. Considering they mounted it wrong in the first place I'm understandable hesitant to pay them to come out again just to realign the dish. I'm a hard core do it yourselfer and would really like to take care of this myself anyway. I enjoy the challenge. Any tips from you experts out there?

One other thing is, when it first lost the 129 signal, I'd go to a channel in the guide, try to pull it up and would get the black screen with "searching for signal" message. This went on a while but now after a system reboot the 129 channels don't even show up in the guide. It's like the receiver doesn't know those 129 channels exist if that makes sense to you. When I do a check switch I get port 1, sat 110 is green, port 2 119 is green and port 3 says comm. And a blank box where it would be green or have the X in it.

So, what the heck are my options? If I HAVE to have an installer out I grudgingly will, but I'm really hoping the "impossible" line used by the dish tech guy on the phone was highly exaggerated!

I'm in southern Indiana by the way, the 622 doesn't even give me the dish aiming coordinates for 129.

Thanks for reading and thanks in advance to anyone who can clue me in on a coarse of action.

Brian

 

[vegassatellite]

Make sure the mast is completely plumb. If you're just getting 129 off that dish 500, then make sure your skew/tilt is at 90. Try setting the elevation at 28 degrees which is what satsig says is the right elevation for Evansville. Not sure if thats where you're at but it ought to put you in the ballpark. You ought to be somewhere around 238 degrees for your azimuth assuming straight on pointing. Being that you are probably on a "u" bracket with that 500 you could be several degrees away from that. Also, skip any switches and go direct from the receiver to the 129 for pointing. Move that dish VERY slowly as the receiver isn't instantaneous on responding to signal. You could very well move right past it without the receiver even registering a blip.

 

[Ponduke]

Thanks Vegas! I am indeed near Evansville. Boonville to be exact. Hooking directly to the receiver to bypass the switch!! Excellent. That's likely been my problem all along. That and not knowing unitil now the elev and azamuth.

Thanks again!