I had a mishap with a tree...

[dewdude420]

Hey guys.

I've been a sat subscriber for about 10 years flopping between dish and directv. had to give up dish when 119 became obscured and got really angry when the directv installers said they wouldn't give us HD because we didn't have a 119 view (this was late may of 07).

anyway, sticking with the sd service the installers mounted the dish on top of the roof rather than use the old mount and actually removed the old mount. the original mount was on the side of the house at the lowest corner of the roof on the overhang..mostly because it was raining during the original install in '99. I had used that same mount for years with no problem...but...for some reason, they decided to put the thing at the top of the roof and couldn't be dissuaded otherwise.

so earlier today i had a tree in my yard I had to take down...and despite having the thing roped off...one limb cut loose and just crashed down on the satellite dish. i couldn't really even see how bad it was knocked off alignment...and after climbing on top of my roof and looking at it...i decided to get the f back down....it was hot, the roof pitch is pretty steep....and there was no way i was able to make the proper adjustments without hanging off the side of the roof...not a good idea when it's 20ft to the ground.

in the meantime i had started reading threads about aligning these 18x20 3lnb dishes because...i had no clue about them, i knew they required a skew angle similar to e*, but that was it. even though we had a 3lnb system, we only ever had a signal from 101...i guess it's got something to do with the switch box. we've only got two pieces of coax going in to the house (as we originally only had two satellite boxes).

so, i manage to find my discarded dish with the mount still attached (hooray for "just toss it on the pile"), got the ladder up to where i could easily work on the location, and proceeded to put the mount back in the old location...climbed up, removed the dish from the pole...managed to get it over where it had to be without dropping it or falling off the roof...and then i proceeded to stick the dish on the mount in about the direction i thought it would be...the google-earth function of dishpointer was nice and pretty much exactly how i narrowed the direction...i adjusted the elevation which had gotten smashed down to 22 degrees...set the dish on the pole...got it in the "general" direction. here's the wtf part...i go to the tv, turn it on...i got sound..i got picture...i had low 30's on everything except for the spot beams which were a little stronger and what i suspect were spot beam transponders..i had 4 or 5 0's...for the record...the transponder i was using was transponder 2.

I live in northern virginia, and without really using anything but the tones on the standard driectv box...here's what my signal strengths are

1 - 8: 96 92 95 67 94 99 96 99
9 - 16: 95 96 96 75 96 100 96 100
17 - 24: 95 100 96 63 96 100 97 99
25 - 32: 95 92 96 0 96 100 96 100

everything's in the 90's or better, which i know is pretty good..and i enjoy seeing 100's (the professional installers didn't even have it aimed that good)...but what's with what looks like that one column of low numbers....i'm guessing spot-beam transponders not being aimed at me?

anyway, what's the general opinion of my signal strengths? did I get them about as high as I could get them?

 

[dishrich]

Don't think you can get much better...& those low ones ARE spot beams as you correctly guessed.

 

[dewdude420]

Yes, I briefly remember a time when all transponders had about the same signal...then spotbeams made a couple go low or disappear...and likewise, spotbeams directed toward me have a better signal than the conus coverage...i suspect some of my 100's are spot-beams directed toward me.

i've also noticed a funky behavior out of my r15. the little 'chart' i tried to recreate was with one of the standard recievers i got back then...the D11...and for the most part, the other 3 D11's agree...then there's the behavior of my R15...oh that same signal readout...things'll vary from 90's down to 60's...but when you pull up the signal meter...both tuners read much higher than the cart did....and while there's maybe 1 or 2% difference between tuners (attribute to slightly different lengths of cable since one was added later) they're never down in the 60's...

however, i come to expect nothing but quirkiness from my r15...i remember going on dtv's offical forums and trying to find out why the unit refused to "season pass" a show on more than one channel...was told by someone it was a "hardware limitation"...i remember getting angry at the fact this guy kept saying it was a hardware limition.....i do know they fixed that particulat problem.........i really dislike the r15 as dvr's go, but i stick with it cuz i have it.

 

[twizt3dsist3r]

your signal strength is just fine, and as a tip, if you go into the menu of your sat box (menu button on the remote - setup - system setup - satellite - repeat sat setup - (dash key on remote) continue dish type oval3 (18x20) enter zip code) the next screen will tell you what all your alignments should be on the dish. As you probably know every screw is a 7/16 socket, almost every household in america has a tool to work on this dish.