Question for the installers

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hdflsts2002

hdflsts2002

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Pub Member / Supporter
Jul 1, 2008
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Ok so as the wife does alot of out of town assignments for her job we finally purchased the camper we've always wanted. In most cases with what a hotel would cost for several weeks to a month and what she get's housing allowance. It finally makes sense. In any case just added the RVing option to our account and purchased a 22k for the camper with a 1000.4 EA dish. First setup went ok but not fantastic using a $20 meter so went out and got something better. FirstStrike FS-1

Have tinkered with it a bit on our home setup so that I might understand it a bit better. Now hopefully on the next install I'll get it tuned better and do it much faster. Question I have is when I download the list they provide for Dish and Direct quite a few of the entries they have indicate that it will show Signal strength and Quality but will not show locked, as in this example

EchoStar 12 at 61.5W? 12559/21500/18 FS1 shows S/Q, does not show LOCKED

Can someone please explain to me what LOCKED actually indicates, why it would not show locked and ideally if you were tuning a 1000.4 EA dish what settings you would use to tune and verify you had the good signal on all 3 Sats.

I'm attaching their Dish/Direct list as it is on a publicly accessible portion of their site so I don't think that I'd be in violation for posting it as opposed to a rather lengthy list that they provide each month that they say is available only to meter owners who have registered their meters with them.
 

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I am not an installer, but I will tell you that none of my satellites ( 61.5 72 77 ) show as being locked, but I get strong signals. Never had a problem
 
ranran said:
I am not an installer, but I will tell you that none of my satellites ( 61.5 72 77 ) show as being locked, but I get strong signals. Never had a problem
Click to expand...

Yea, knew that based on testing with my home setup, been working for years. Home I can find some TP in list that lock and some that as the list says will not show lock. Was just wondering what Lock truly indicates as obviously it is not an indicator of if you are receiving good signal. Also wondering what TPs installers use when they are setting up as I have read posts throughout the forums here saying things like use a strong TP to do your tuning. So was wondering if the installers had preferred TPs that they use for a given statellite.
 
I was told by an installer, that the receiver (satellite ) finds the appropriate TP on its own as you change stations.
 
Yes know that the receiver will do that. I'm asking during tuning of the setup using a sat meter.
 
As a RV'er, if you are changing locations frequently I think it would be a test to set up a 1000.4 each time you move. I have enough grief with a Dish 500 and happy to get 110 and 119 and that makes the wife happy. I have about wore out the marks for EL and Skew and give it a guess.
 
jbull1381 said:
As a RV'er, if you are changing locations frequently I think it would be a test to set up a 1000.4 each time you move.
Click to expand...
I have a 1000.4 in my RV and I have a cheapo $10 signal meter that I use to set up at every campsite. Once you do it a few times, it becomes simple. As I travel only a few hundred miles per day until I get to my destination, skew does not play a big part in my set-up. I get 119 dialed in, then set the meter for higher sensitivity and keep tweaking it for highest signal, then do a checkswitch. Once in a great while I may be off on 110/119 instead of 110/119/129, but not usually because I now know to cover the middle lnb horn with my hand while checking the position, if the signal goes away, then I know I am locked on 119. Otherwise I am off 10 degrees one way or the other. The biggest thing is making sure your arm is plumb. I use an old brake drum as a base. Unless we get high winds, it works great.
 
Mark_AR love your idea re hand over middle lnb. Simple effective solution to making sure you're on 119. Just bought a new 1000.2 and 211k that we will be taking camping and will try your method for sure. Never had any problems with our 311 and dish500 and I'm thinking the 1000.2 won't be much different. Have that same meter too. Tks again for great simple idea.
 
Ray thanks. This is more the info I was looking for. Have, well should say had WA setup at home until yesterday when it was switched to EA. I was able to see the TPs being used there to report quality back to dish when doing analysis under the diagnostic options. Now that I have EA at home I can see the TPs being used to report to dish on it. You did get what I was asking for though. I bought a digital meter (FirstStrike FS-1) so that I could better see what signal I was pulling the SNR on it and Quality. The only piece missing from the puzzle was which TPs are active and best to use for sighting and peaking. The manufacturer's website allows me to dl a stat list to load to the meter but what I found using that to just test with my old WA home setup was that some of the TPs that they provide to load were not responding at all, also some of the ones that they provide indicate that they will not show locked but will show SNR and Quality levels. So what I was looking for were active TPs that would be good to use when setting up in the RV. Using some of the other sites here I can get freq and polarity to load to the meter but just wasn't sure what the best TPs were on each of the 3 EA birds.

Thanks again Ray, that's what I was looking for.
 
Ok. You finally got me to register. Im an installer but have only been doing it for four months. As far as peaking your dish, 1000.4 ea peak on 72. Wa on 119. Use the dish pointer to give you skew settings for the zip youre in and lock that in. Dont mess with skew anymore. Next tune elev according to zip. Tighten those bolts. Now you just need to spin the dish around to find the signal. Use transp 19 for 72. Use trans 14 for 119. Signal levels dont have to be great since its a temporary setup. Shoot for above 60, but above 40 should provide uninterrupted service.

Dont forget to fine tune your 1000.4 dish by loosening slightly, the 3 7/16 nuts on the bottom of the plate parallel to the ground. And adjust slightly left to right with the 1/2 inch adjacent nut. This helps fine tune.

As far as locked goes....dont get wrapped up in that. We simply use it during initial installation to begin the downoad procedures and make them run a little faster.
 
Oh, and finally. Now that you have peaked on 72 or 119, since it is the middle lnb, if your signal levels are extremely low on your other sats, all you need to go back to is the adjustment of the skew. But very very minimally. Congrats. Eventually youll take great pride when you arrive at your location, set the skew and elev. Level your mast and point the dish south, go to 6-1-1 and say. Wow! Im good!
 

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