Unknown satellite positions on my fta receiver...

[pmccully26]

I have recently purchased a free to air satellite system. It consists of a 36" offset dish, a universal dual lnbf, DiSEqC SG6000 H-H Motor, and an Omegasat DSB5700. Installed it in less than a day. First time with one... I'm picking up several satellites mainly Galaxy19 KU, StarOne C2 and AMC 5. My question is when I do a blind search for channels on different satellites, for example, Amazonas KU the dish won't move. When I do a Galaxy search, the dish moves in complete different directions of the position. My biggest concern is are the positions pre-programmed correctly into my system. I noticed there's satellites out there that aren't even programmed into my system. How do I program them in? The owners manual doesn't have that option in there. BTW, I don't have much faith in this receiver. Don't know what I have here. I plan on investing more money into this hobby, just curious if I got off on the right foot or not. Thanks to you for any help you may be able to give me.

Paul

 

[Lak7]

Start by picking a Satellite closest to your location - which looks to be AMC3 at 87 West
In the Receiver's Setup Menu, find where you enter your Location's Long & Latitude - should be something like 33.5 North & 86.8 West
In the Sat Setup Menu, Find Sat AMC 3 @ 87 West, and Select USALS for motor option.
Look here for a Strong Transponder - SatelliteGuys.US_TheList - 87.0°W AMC 3 Ku
Select one of the Strong TPs in the Sat Setup Menu
Enter correct LNB L.O. settings
Scan for channels.

The Dish should drive to Sat, which should be Center / Due South.
Triple Check that Motor Latitude Scale is set to your Lat (don't use "elevation" scale on motor)
Triple Check that Dish Elevation is set correctly.
Triple Check that LNB is Skewed to Zero.
Triple check that Motor Azimuth is correct (compass direction)

Dishpointer.com

 

[oblio]

I have recently purchased a free to air satellite system. I plan on investing more money into this hobby, just curious if I got off on the right foot or not.

Maybe the first thing to understand is that the hardware used in this hobby is not really all that plug and play. It is critical that you set your dish up properly with your best due south reference sat (both aziumth and elevation). While the stb can come with a Ku sat list, you then have to move the dish to each sat - find it - tweak it - and tweak it again. The tp's listed on the stb may or may not be valid so you need to find an active tp to lock on to (which you typically will need to enter manually). One or two degrees off up or down or east or west can get you or lose you a sat. The stb doesn't know what sat you are aimed at until you tell it which one by saving the specific position and doesn't really know where a sat is until you point the dish at a target. You can use USALS but you may find its often easier to just drive your dish using diseq 1.2. USALS seems like a great idea but it assumes a perfect set up which you may or may not have. Once you have your farthest e and w sats locked in, then time to tweak again to optimize for your dish set up across all sats.

As a hobby you can expect to spend hours and hours fine tuning, searching for a sat you can't find, blind scanning, tweaking, etc.. And the then the wind blows or it gets cold or somethign else happens so your set up changes and then you start all over again.