Repointing Dish after 129 Shuts Down

[zippyfrog]

I am curious...I feel like when I put up my Dish I had to sacrifice some of the signal strength on 110 and 119 in order to get 129 up around 50. Do others who install Dish's for a living have to do something like that - sacrifice some strength on 110/119 to get 129 up? I feel like it was really easy for me to get a strong signal on 110/119 but not 129 and as I was changing the skew on the Dish, 110/119 went down and 129 went up. Has anyone who installs the Dish's experience that? I have a 1000.2 Turbo HD model.

 

[rvvaquero]

I am curious...I feel like when I put up my Dish I had to sacrifice some of the signal strength on 110 and 119 in order to get 129 up around 50. Do others who install Dish's for a living have to do something like that - sacrifice some strength on 110/119 to get 129 up? I feel like it was really easy for me to get a strong signal on 110/119 but not 129 and as I was changing the skew on the Dish, 110/119 went down and 129 went up. Has anyone who installs the Dish's experience that? I have a 1000.2 Turbo HD model.

When I was rv'ing, I probably set up my dish 100 times or more. I never got as strong a signal on 129 as on the other two. However, I never had a problem with reception. I would just set it up on 119 with proper skew. 110 and 129 were always fine.

 

[jwhalerfan]

Not really. If your pole/mast is plumb and the dish settings are correct for your area, the 110, 119 and 129 will be as high as they get. That was the design of the 1000.2 dish. Even if you had an old 500 dish pointed directly at one of those orbitals, the signal strength would be relative. Here are Chicago's Azimuth, elevation and skew for the 1000.2. If you are sacrificing one orbital's strength to increase another, your settings are off. The real test, more than the arbitrary number on the screen's signal scale, is it's performance.

 

[telstar_1]

129 always showed a significantly lower signal level than 110 & 119. If peaking on 129 caused any compromise to 110/119, I never noticed, as those 2 were very strong (well above 50) while 129 was often well below 50. I was a little surprised as well at how well 129 seemed to hold up in use, given the low apparent strength.

 

[jerryez]

What are the best transponders on each of the three birds to check the signal strength?

 

[tjboston5676]

Generally if 129 goes up 110 goes down and vice versa. However the 119 hits in the center of reflector and is not affected by scew. So if 119 is going down as well that means you are adjusting the azimuth or elevation rather than scew. Point the dish using the 119 and get it as high as you can. Once that's set you can adjust the skew to dial in 110 and 129. If you continue to have issues, your reflector may be bent. Also I wouldn't really worry about the 129 as it's going away in a few weeks and there's only a few channels left on it, mainly music. So if you can't get it, it's really not a big deal.

 

[tjboston5676]

What are the best transponders on each of the three birds to check the signal strength?

I like to point on transponder 14 of the 119. If that's as high as you can get it and skew is set properly the 110 and 129 will be fine

 

[jerryez]

I get 55 on sat 129 and the low to mid 60's on 110 and 119, but have never had a reception problem.

 

[zippyfrog]

Got it - thanks for all the feedback on this.

 

[SandFarmer]

I am curious...I feel like when I put up my Dish I had to sacrifice some of the signal strength on 110 and 119 in order to get 129 up around 50 . . .

That's why way back when there were only the smaller dishes I had them install a "Wing" dish when they were doing that for augmented programming. And really zero in the 110/119 dish. The last go around years ago they re-anchored and aimed both dishes the Tech Instructor that did the job said, "They're no longer necessary." I asked for a 1k4 that they quit making long ago, he said, "Yeh, that'd be nice." Just that little amount of material that it took for the 1k4 probably made Charlie enough to buy a couple sets of frequencies.

As said by the once and still great Field Super, Chuck Thursby, while we were watching my HD Conversion being done way up on my chimney, "The 1k2s are too much trouble for the WA that's why the 1k4." But since I already had a Wing Dish, I couldn't have a 1k4. "The 1k2s are just large enough to kinda get it all." And like zippyfrog said, ". . . had to sacrifice some signal strength . . .", I've been lucky. And when 129 goes away I can either disconnect it from the system or just do nothing. So . . .

Someone had a nicely detailed spread sheet for Sat strengths. Is that still around and updated?
Right now I get at best:
110: 60
119: 68
129: 51
Wow! Haven't checked that in a while. Those numbers are lower than I have gotten in the past. No wonder Rain and Snow Fade happens more often.

My d¡sh Farm:

 

[HipKat]

That's why way back when there were only the smaller dishes I had them install a "Wing" dish when they were doing that for augmented programming. And really zero in the 110/119 dish. The last go around years ago they re-anchored and aimed both dishes the Tech Instructor that did the job said, "They're no longer necessary." I asked for a 1k4 that they quit making long ago, he said, "Yeh, that'd be nice." Just that little amount of material that it took for the 1k4 probably made Charlie enough to buy a couple sets of frequencies.

As said by the once and still great Field Super, Chuck Thursby, while we were watching my HD Conversion being done way up on my chimney, "The 1k2s are too much trouble for the WA that's why the 1k4." But since I already had a Wing Dish, I couldn't have a 1k4. "The 1k2s are just large enough to kinda get it all." And like zippyfrog said, ". . . had to sacrifice some signal strength . . .", I've been lucky. And when 129 goes away I can either disconnect it from the system or just do nothing. So . . .

Someone had a nicely detailed spread sheet for Sat strengths. Is that still around and updated?
Right now I get at best:
110: 60
119: 68
129: 51
Wow! Haven't checked that in a while. Those numbers are lower than I have gotten in the past. No wonder Rain and Snow Fade happens more often.

My d¡sh Farm:

View attachment 163267

What's the deal with the shield?

 

[SandFarmer]

What's the deal with the shield?

It works great against Klingons . . .

. . . and keeps the Sun out of its eyes. It's really helped with its Tennis Game. If only it was a 1k4, it'd have better coverage of the court.

Here's my 129 Horn Condom . . .

 

[telstar_1]

It works great against Klingons . . .

. . . and keeps the Sun out of its eyes. It's really helped with its Tennis Game. If only it was a 1k4, it'd have better coverage of the court.

Here's my 129 Horn Condom . . .

View attachment 163313

Odd setup. Normally with a wind dish you'd just use a D500 rather than need to blank signals on the 129 feed of a 1000.2 so they don't clash. Is the wing connected to the 1000.2's aux input?

1000.4 is EA, right, so that's a different deal. At the time EA came out to be operated along with WA they said it was so that more locations would have LOS to service.

 

[SandFarmer]

. . . Is the wing connected to the 1000.2's aux input? . . .

A DPH42 Switch.

 

[NYDutch]

Odd setup. Normally with a wind dish you'd just use a D500 rather than need to blank signals on the 129 feed of a 1000.2 so they don't clash. Is the wing connected to the 1000.2's aux input?

1000.4 is EA, right, so that's a different deal. At the time EA came out to be operated along with WA they said it was so that more locations would have LOS to service.

There's nothing EA specific about the 1000.4 itself, including the WA LNBF that was readily available for it. The earlier 1000.2 saw much wider use of course when it was the only single unit triple LNBF dish for much of the time. For my portable dish, I still very much prefer my 1000.4, although I do use it with a 1000.2 LNBF since 77 was dropped for CONUS use.

 

[Almighty1]

I have a dual DISH Setup as well as mentioned here:

https://www.satelliteguys.us/xen/threads/hopper-3-not-compatible-with-international-channels.357632/

I am on Western Arc. When I first had DISH installed with America's Top 250 package & JadeWorld (International Chinese Cantonese programming using 118) in November 17, 2012 with a Hopper 2000, it was a DISH 500+ antenna and DPP 500+ switch with 110/118/119 but no 129.

When I upgraded the Hopper 2000 to the Hopper 3 on February 7, 201 - they installed a new 1000.2 antenna for the 110/119/129 and also used my existing Dish 500+ as a wing dish for 118 but I have no idea how they are physically connected as seen here:

Back of the house has 3 dishes facing the same direction, 2 of them were there but unlabeled when I had Directv installed in May 12, 2009 with the HD DVR.

 

[HipKat]

Odd setup. Normally with a wind dish you'd just use a D500 rather than need to blank signals on the 129 feed of a 1000.2 so they don't clash. Is the wing connected to the 1000.2's aux input?

1000.4 is EA, right, so that's a different deal. At the time EA came out to be operated along with WA they said it was so that more locations would have LOS to service.

Typically the reason that we cover the 129 is if it’s getting some signal, it can interfere with the wing dish

 

[Jim5506]

Typically the reason that we cover the 129 is if it’s getting some signal, it can interfere with the wing dish

Exactly, way back when, I had WA dish but our HD locals were on 61.5 so I had the 110/119/129 setup plus a wing dish on 61.5 and it really confused the Hopper trying to figure out which channels to use for PTAT (It usually recorded only CBS and NBC). Dish finally just gave me an EA setup with 61.5 and 72.7 and solved the mess.

 

[zippyfrog]

I am seeing a lot of people talking about peaking in the 50's and 60's. How do you peak it to 100, let alone 125? Or is the maximum peak value based off of location, so someone like me just outside Chicago can never get 125?

 

[nelson61]

I am seeing a lot of people talking about peaking in the 50's and 60's. How do you peak it to 100, let alone 125? Or is the maximum peak value based off of location, so someone like me just outside Chicago can never get 125?

It all depends where you are. The Dish satellites generally have their focal point in the southeastern US to provide max signal in that area. Why? Because the signal loss from the satellites are affected by humidity causing the southeast to have higher losses and require a higher sat signal for consistant reception.

Similarly in the arid west, a relatively low signal will still provide excellent reception.

Look at some of the satellite footprint maps.
The power being received at the antenna decreases 50 percent for each 3db decrease from the beam center point db. For example, if you are at the db contour 6 db away from the center, you would only receive 25 percent of the power being received at the center point (0.5x0.5)

So every customer is different and will have different maximum peak values at their location compared to other geographic locations.

From the customer's point of view it is not too important excepting in strong storms since reception should be solid way down to a reading of 25-30 on you receiver. The receiver scale is not calibrated in db.