Dish alignment

Step 1

Assemble your dish as per instructions included, and also fit the LNB to the end of the arm on the dish ensuring that the horn is pointing towards the dish and the satellite cable socket is furthest away from the dish. As you look at the dish from the front with the LNB nearest to you, rotate the LNB slightly clockwise to about the 7 o'clock position, this will help the LNB match the angle that the satellite is leaning over at.

Step 2

Find south , easily done by compass or you can look for the midday sun, finally just look at someone else's dish. Now you have found south imagine you can see a small rainbow in the sky, the centre of which is at 30 degrees above the horizon, the rainbow itself contains many satellites, but we are only interested in the left hand or eastern side of the rainbow, and in particularly the last satellite along the left hand side of the rainbow, about 30 degrees left of south. At this point you need to ensure you have a clear line of site to the satellite and that no trees, buildings or vehicles are in the way, a good guide for determining how far back you need to go is to be at least double the height of the obstacle back from the obstacle, for instance a 20ft tree would need to be 40ft away to allow you to clear the top of it.

Step 3

Place dish onto tripod , and lean the dish back slightly, only about 10 degrees for the UK and about 20 degrees for Spain.

Step 4

Connect the cable between your receiver inside and the SatBeeper outside, then run a small lead from the SatBeeper to the LNB on the dish.

Now you can power up your receiver . If you now listen to the ear piece of the SatBeeper you should hear a high pitch tone, move the dish around slowly until you hear the tone get higher in pitch, you have found a satellite, but not necessarily the right one, move the dish left two inches and down an inch and see if you can find another satellite, then do the same again and again, the last satellite you find on the left is the one you are after, and in the UK it is also the loudest satellite you will find, although in Southern Spain it is one of the quietest satellites, hence the need for the 88cm dish as a minimum to get at least some of the channels working in Southern Spain. Once you have found the last satellite fine tune the dish on the tripod until you are in the middle of the satellite, then gently tighten up the nuts.

Now go inside and confirm you are on the right satellite by checking the pictures from the receiver, you should eventually see the Sky Demonstration Page after the message "searching for listings" has disappeared, if so then job done, disconnect the SatBeeper and fly lead outside and connect the main cable direct to the LNB, use the weatherproof boot if supplied to cover the satellite F connector to keep out the rain.

If you do not get the above then continue.

Bring up the Services menu of your Sky box and go into 4 " System Setup ", and then into 6 " Signal Test ", you should have two grey bars at least half way across the screen for Strength and Quality, and the Lock Indicator should be OK , the Network ID should be 0002 and the Transport Stream 07d4.

Assuming you do have two grey bars and the numbers correspond with the above, then your receiver may just be confused, turn the power to the receiver off completely so there are NO lights on the receiver at all, then power the receiver back up again.

After about a minute or so you should be able to turn your receiver onto a green light and find that the receiver is now running properly, if not then either your receiver or LNB may be faulty.

If you have only one grey bar for strength and no quality at all, or the numbers do not correspond with the above, then you are not on the correct satellite and have probably not gone far enough left with the dish, instead will probably be on 13 or 19 East and not on 28.2 East, move the dish left by about two inches and down by 1 inch and find the last satellite and try again.

If you find you have low strength or quality, usually less than half way across the screen, and you have definitely optimised the dish alignment for the best signal, then it may be that signals coming to the dish may be partly blocked by trees or some other obstacle, move the dish further back from any obstacles and try again.

If all of the above have been tried and you still get no joy, ensure that if you have a Police Speed Radar Detector in your vehicle that you have disconnected it as these are notorious for causing signal break up and missing channels, this will also apply if a nearby vehicle has one, try locating your dish onto the opposite side of your vehicle to get away from the cause of interference.

Note

If you have an 88cm dish, it is sensible in windy conditions to shelter the dish next to your vehicles and also to keep the dish as low down as possible to reduce wind loading, also put in the ground pegs for extra stability.