Perfect Vision Bird Dog 3.0 or 4.0

[Indy]

I am going to bite the bullet and buy a "professional" meter. I have been using a Channel Master single sat analog meter for years and would like to upgrade. Is the price difference between the 3.0 and 4.0 worth the expense? I see you gain Qpsk and a spectrum analyzer with the 4.0. I don't care about the Qpsk side of the signal since I am only KU FTA for feeds and aiming my Dish Network dishes for 110, 119 and 61.5. Thoughts? Thanks

 

[Indy]

I guess no one on the forum has any experience with the Birdog meter. I have only found one reference to the word Birdog on the forums and that was just to say it is a meter. So with that in mind anyone want to chime in on meters and their favorites? I still would like to have the meter ID the sat with the software. This would come in handy when I take a Dish receiver camping for vacations.

 

[cracklincrotch]

That's a lot of money to drop on a meter for aiming at E*. Those birds are pretty strong and aren't hard to find without a meter.

I'm a Birdog v3 owner myself. If it's only E* birds you're ever going to do, save your money and get a v3.0 if you want one. That's more finder than you'll ever need or use. That said, it's your money.

 

[Indy]

That's a lot of money to drop on a meter for aiming at E*. Those birds are pretty strong and aren't hard to find without a meter.

I'm a Birdog v3 owner myself. If it's only E* birds you're ever going to do, save your money and get a v3.0 if you want one. That's more finder than you'll ever need or use. That said, it's your money.

cracklincrotch, I really liked the V3.0 and V4.0. The DDSI feature would be nice for FTA in particular, and of course Dish. I realize the Birdog meter cost twice as much as a good used Dual Buddy unit. So I bought a good used DB off eBay last night. From what the manual states in the specs the frequency spread is 950-2150 MHz so that should work for both FTA and Dish. What do you think?

 

[skysurfer]

cracklincrotch, I really liked the V3.0 and V4.0. The DDSI feature would be nice for FTA in particular, and of course Dish. I realize the Birdog meter cost twice as much as a good used Dual Buddy unit. So I bought a good used DB off eBay last night. From what the manual states in the specs the frequency spread is 950-2150 MHz so that should work for both FTA and Dish. What do you think?

I don't think i'd get too excited over a DDSI - from discussions I've had with others, it doesn't sound like that feature would be reliable since many uplinkers do not configure info in their SI properly for the DDSI to work reliably depending on the signal chosen for locking/identification.

950-2150 should work fine for FTA and dish network.

The meter I got a couple of weeks ago was a Satfinder SF-3000S - I was choosing between a birdog and this one since they both have spectrum analyzer functions and I chose the Satfinder because it was at least a couple hundred dollars cheaper than the Birdog, depending on the seller I was using for Birdog price quotes. The SF-3000S works good now that I have played with it for a couple of weeks to get used to it and to update the database to my liking on the PC and dump it into the meter.

 

[cracklincrotch]

The only way the DDSI works is by downloading new transponder information from the Birdog site. That can change frequently for some sats and can be a pain if you have to update often. That's when a spectrum analyzer can be handy. But, that's more $$$.