they are lower in the sky and almost due east. Do you have clear line of site to the east southeast?

set at 37 elevation and 75 on skew and make sure your mast is 100% plumb

For your zip 54247, dishpointer shows, for a 1000.4:

1. EL 36.9
2. AZ true 158.9, magnetic 162.8
3. SK 75

Dish Network shows:

1. EL 37
2. AZ 161
3. SK 75

i'm assuming you are using the point dish screen and not a meter, so at this point the best you can try is set the sat on 61.5 and transponder 10 on that screen

maybe try sat 77 on transponder 21

those are a little tougher to find without a meter. Is the LNB on the dish look like three evenly spaced lenses or two side by side and one off to the side?

have yet to see em in your local stores other than maybe rat shack, but knowing that it is a 1000.4 it will be tough to lock in without a meter as those sats are not near as high powered as the 119 and 110

you may look at meters from the dish store that is a sponsor of this site, the link is at the top of the page

real bummer I'm not closer and can run by and point it for ya

Velvet Elvis said:

is it supposed to be this difficult to find these satellites?

Click to expand...

It can be quite difficult to line up three satellites at once -- especially if you don't know exactly what equipment you've got and exactly where aim. This is why DISH Network typically does it for free. Their installers have meters, line-of-sight scopes and usually quite a bit of experience in finding satellites without lots of back and forth and running around.

People have done it themselves; see here for example. The problem with using the receiver is the response time is so slow you can slew across the desired sat and never see it. Since the dish is wider than it is tall, the most sensitive direction is the az setting. If you're using a compass, then you use the "magnetic" number, not the "true" az. I always did my own installs on the smaller Dish 500's sometimes using the receiver, and sometimes using a $20 meter. I think you have to be within about +- 2 deg on a Dish 500 in order to see anything, and then fine tune. The 1000.4 is bigger and you have to get closer before the receiver is useful. I couldn't argue with a free upgrade, so I let a Dish tech do my 1000.4. After an hour or so in preparation, he had it peaked in about 5 minutes using his Sat Buddy.

Clear the check switch matrix. if it still says 119 or 110 it will not lock on to eastern arc satellites. To clear the matrix disconnect the sat feed from the receiver and run check switch, let it count to 38, then restart the receiver it should then lock on to eastern arc satellites.