Abbreviated Instruction on Finding your True South Satellite

[siliconswamp]

For those of you who are totally new to this hobby, to find your true south satellite, you must do the following:

Find out your Lattitude and Longitude of Your Site.

There are many ways to do so, GPS, ZipCode, Etc...
An easy one is to punch in your zip code here:
http://www.zipinfo.com/search/zipcode.htm
That is one that I Just Googled (Be sure to Check the Lattitude Longitude option)

For Instance.... My office is at Zip Code 70058 Which is:
90.690 West Longitude...
I go to HTTP://www.lyngsat.com
Click on Frequencies, (North America in my case)
And Find that there are 3 satellites that are availible at 91 W which is as close to True South that I can get I am going to aim for Galaxy 10...
Just Look for a sat close to your longitude...
Here it would be 90.0... West So 91 West is as close as possible

That is the easiest Way to find true south.

Then I punch up Sat Finder Availible Here: http://www.arachnoid.com/satfinder

And find out the Skew of the LNB on my true south satellite which is 1.6
Set the Lnb then Find an open unencrypted channel on the sat.... Program that in to the receiver, and follow the manufacturers instructions on setting the Elevation of the dish (You are on your own here.... Every dish is different as well as different for the motors....)

Hope this all Helps, I will Whip up a PDF File that I can post somewhere that can be downloaded with pictures so that everyone will have a step by step... look for this by friday....

Cheers,

Elias

 

[Mr Tony]

or you can use this one
http://www.sadoun.com/Sat/Installation/Satellite-Heading-Calculator.htm

 

[siliconswamp]

Awesome!!!

I had noticed that when I first started looking at this forum that there was no Abbreviated cliffs note version (Or Explination) of exactly how people were getting the true south sat.

My wife suggested the post and the Soon to come PDF File.... She's so smart!


Thanks for that website, I will pass that on to a friend of mine who is installing soon... Will Make his life simpler and probably reduce the questions from his wife such as (Why didn't you read the manual? Are you sure that you know what you are doing?)

Leave it to the women to help us realize the futility of some projects.....

 

[Mr Tony]

there is a spot on that site to put in zipcode, so if you're not in a big city you can pinpoint latitude & longitude

Also....Welcome to the forum

 

[PilotS77]

Finding True South (meaning calculating it) is not hard - I know that mine is 176.

The hard part is pointing your dish to that spot!

If I find a trick for that I shall post it here.

John