Is Hitting the Correct Transponder Rocket Science?

[Wwwinfowarscom]

Just asking as I have had a satellite installer up on my roof now for an hour and a half and counting trying to lock in Telstar 5. Have a signal reading but no quality on my Pansat.

He's telling me hitting the transponder within the IA5 satellite "is like trying to find a needle" inside a haystack."

He has a standard meter but he said it would have been more helpful if he would have brought along his special ku band "Birddog Meter" which he said is broken?

Is what he's telling me accurate or is he full of Bullsh!t? I put the dish up myself and if I had my own meter I would have tried to tune it in myself!!

I don't have a meter that's why I brought in "a professional" to get the job done. All I know is time is money and I'm starting to get frustrated.

 

[PSB]

Let me guess he is a DirecTV or Dishnotwork installer

DO NOT PAY HIM if he cant find the satellite, tell him now!

Did you ask to see his LICENSE?

 

[bringit_u]

I hope it work out for u I am haveing problem locating the sat myself....

 

[Eastcoast]

IOM you don't need him if you were able to mount the dish yourself.These Guys here can help you as the have many others and the best meter you could have is your receiver and a small tv up by the dish.

Dave

 

[SATisfied]

There are tons of live tp's on telstar 5, or Intelsat Americas 5 ( same sat @ 97W ).
Just use your tv and your receiver if possible. Do you have a motor on your dish, or are you pointing it manually?

 

[Eastcoast]

Another note, we should nkow a little more about your setup, the dish size type of LNBF etc. Hope hes not tryint to hit that bird witha 18 in dish.

Dave

 

[Wwwinfowarscom]

The bad news is he was not able to hit the bird without the "birddog meter."

The good news is there was no charge!

Now I know he was able to hit Telstar 5 even without the "birddog" as the signal meter went up to 82%, we just couldn't get the quality meter to budge on any of the sats he hit? We even brought my 13' TV up to the rooftop to assist with signal verification.

I have a Pansat 3500SD, Spitfire LNBF, Weingard 30' round dish (no moter) and a Pansat diseqc 4 way splitter (with output 4 going to the Pansat.) Yes I had diseqc 4 selected in the set up menu for Telstar 5/ku.

Indeed he was a Directv installer. Real nice guy, unfortunately I was losing my patience with the situation a bit, untill I was told the trip charge was waived...

He is going to come back out with a new birddog meter next week unless of course I can tune it in myself. Any suggestions?
Thanks!

 

[PSB]

With the satellite "bleeper" he was using there is NO WAY you can tell what satellite he was on, very often you are pulled to the MUCH stronger DBS satellites!

I wouls sniff around for a REAL LICENSED satellite installer!

 

[Stefan]

If this guy is any kind of a professional satellite dish installer he should have a spectrum analyzer and that would make finding the correct satellite a piece of cake. If your serious about installing satellite dishes for a living a good spectrum analyzer is a must have tool.

 

[PSB]

I am a LICENSED professional with over 20 years experience Europe and USA.


A positive satellite ID meter should be good enough, as long as it has a LIVE TP entered, DirecTV and Dish installers do not use linear KU satellites very often so sometimes the TP's they have stored on their positve satellite ID meter are out of date!

 

[hwh]

I have a Pansat 3500SD, Spitfire LNBF, Weingard 30' round dish (no moter) and a Pansat diseqc 4 way splitter (with output 4 going to the Pansat.) Yes I had diseqc 4 selected in the set up menu for Telstar 5/ku.

DiSEqC splitter? DiSEqC aren't splitters, they're switches. Almost the reverse of splitters. The "4 output" is really the 4 input and should be going to LNB, not the receiver. In fact, if you only have one dish you don't need one at all, just hook the LNB to the receiver directly. You should do that during initial setup anyway just to eliminate any problems with it.

Also, have you tried blind scanning whatever you're pointed at?

 

[Stefan]

A positive satellite ID meter should be good enough, as long as it has a LIVE TP entered

Good enough for a rough initial alignment maybe, but for fine tuning and tweaking of things like focal point, scaler ring, and skew adjustment to minimize side lode interference from adjacent satellites one really needs a spectrum analyzer.

Also those meters may indeed be good enough for DBS services like dishnet and DTV because the small 18 inch dishes have a very wide beamwidth (on the order of 6-8 degrees) and the DBS satellites use a different frequency range (12.2 to 12.7Ghz) and are spaced much wider apart. Therefore alignment of the pizza dish is not very critical at all.

Bottom line, if this guy is just a buddy trying to help out his freind and isn't charging anything then fine, but if he's a so called professional and he's charging for his services fire him and get someone else.

 

[Wwwinfowarscom]

Yup tried the blind scan. Yea I know the diseq is really a switcher, bad terminogy.

Whats really weird is I am picking up quality signals now off of Telstar 5 however when I run a blind scan on the 30' dish all I'm picking up is canadian programming, the same stuff thats on my 18' dish!

I plug in the TP coordinates on the menu and they don't seem to stick always reverting back to the previous setting.

Which tells me two things. Either the 30 dish' is picking up the direct tv satellite or the dish is in fact getting a signal off Telstar 5 and is unable to lock into IA5 programming when I run the blind scan for whatever reason?

YIKES!

 

[Shawn95GT]

It still sounds like you have the DiSEqC switch backwards.

Ports 1/2/3/4 are for seperate dishes / LNBs. There is only one 'out' port. As the others have said - you don't need it.

 

[Stefan]

Whats really weird is I am picking up quality signals now off of Telstar 5 however when I run a blind scan on the 30' dish all I'm picking up is canadian programming, the same stuff thats on my 18' dish

Previously you mentioned a Diseqc switch. Do you have both dishes hooked upto your reciever through that switch? If so disconnect the pizza dish from the switch and just connect the other dish directly to your reciever. Sometimes these switches are "leaky" and pass some signal from the other dish whenever they shouldn't. Also make sure your settings are set correctly in your antenna setup menu.

 

[Wwwinfowarscom]

Set up in the menu is fine. I will go back up and disco the switch and mainline the dish into the receiver just to be sure. Appreciate all the feedback!

 

[Hakkamike]

Just asking as I have had a satellite installer up on my roof now for an hour and a half and counting trying to lock in Telstar 5. Have a signal reading but no quality on my Pansat.

He's telling me hitting the transponder within the IA5 satellite "is like trying to find a needle" inside a haystack."

He has a standard meter but he said it would have been more helpful if he would have brought along his special ku band "Birddog Meter" which he said is broken?

Is what he's telling me accurate or is he full of Bullsh!t? I put the dish up myself and if I had my own meter I would have tried to tune it in myself!!

I don't have a meter that's why I brought in "a professional" to get the job done. All I know is time is money and I'm starting to get frustrated.

Hey, my IQ is somthing like a 50 or 60 on a good day and I did it

 

[Wwwinfowarscom]

I'm going to take another crack at it tommorow. It's raining again....

 

[Wwwinfowarscom]

Well it gets weirder. I disconnected the switcher and hooked up the dish direct to my receiver and did a blind scan as some of the TP's were showing a quality signal. What shows up is ITV1 and ITV5 weather programming from Canada and no IA5?

Well according to the installer he locked this dish to 97 west but he still needs to dial it in with his birddog meter. If this is the case why am I picking up canadian weather programming?

What now...

 

[Mr Tony]

something isnt set up right

all you have been able to get is DBS slots it looks like. If you are using the 30" dish, make sure the LNB LO is set to 10750

Hook the cable directly to the reciever (bypass all switches). Scroll down to the TP list and fine either one that starts with 12152 or 12177. Those are strong.
Move the dish west. As you move it, you'll see the signal go up and down. That helps but its QUALITY you need. The signal strength going up and down means you are hitting a satellite. But slowly move it until the quality meter moves.

edit: Pansat 3500 calls the LNB LO "LNB local freq"