Aiming DirecTV in Wyoming

[chasfm11]

Hello. I'm a new user to this forum (please be gentle )

I use my DirecTV receiver in my RV. I have an old Magnavox single LNB dish (with an indicator LED on it) along with my Sony SAT-55 receiver. This dish is mounted on a Winegard tripod with compass points around the base. Because I understand that the mast must be plumb and the tripod properly oriented north-south, it rarely takes me more than two minutes to aim my dish when we set up camp here it Texas. I've conned over a dozen friends into giving up their cable and getting DirecTV, have done all of their installations and had similar success in aiming their dishes.

I really stubbed my toe when we went to Wyoming on a trip. I tried two different times at two different places and couldn't get any channels. I did what I've always done - looked up the zip code on the receiver, used the azimuth and elevation to set up the first dish alignment and then used the LED on the LNB to find the limits of the signal for both azimuth and elevation, setting dish in the middle of each range and looking at the receiver to verify my signal strength. Here is what I saw:
1. All transponders under 24 were zero.
2. I only had even transponders above 24 and and saw 75-90% on those.

I thought that I might be on the wrong "bird" so I very carefully and slowly swung the dish 20 degrees on either side of the limit of the signal I was getting but the LED never registered another signal. I moved to the top of the elevation range and tried to swing the azimuth again 20 degrees. Still nothing.

I tried all of the other tricks that I know:
1. wired the dish directly to the satellite in on the receiver to eliminate the RV wiring.
2. unplugged the receiver for two minutes, powered on and tried re-aiming
3. metered my cable for open or short
4. Called DirecTV and had them reset my account.

None of it was any help. I gave up.

When I returned home, I was determined to figure out what was wrong. I figured that either the LNB or the receiver had gone bad on the trip. I set the dish up in my drive way and had 85-90% on all transponders in less than 45 seconds using the same techniques above. Reception is great on all channels.

So where did I go wrong in Wyoming? What facts didn't I provide that would help you to help me?

 

[texasbrit]

Satellite B at 119 has no transponders below 24........is it at all possible you selected the wrong satellite???

 

[chasfm11]

My selecting 119 is very possible but...
1. It was in the range given to me for that location by the zip code
2. I couldn't find another "target" within 20 degrees azimuth in either direction.

What I was hoping for is some guidance about what to do if I'm in the same position again.

 

[chasfm11]

OK. I'm feeling a lot better now. When I came home from my trip, I was really feeling stupid. I just couldn't for the life of me figure out why I had so many problems in Wyoming and I was expecting, frankly, to immediately get a reply to my request that started with "hey dummy." With only one reply so far, I figure:
1. No one knows off the top of their head what I was doing wrong. This just means I have to try to research it and figure it out for myself. (I don't buy that folks in Wyoming cannot aim DirecTV)
2. It is a deep, dark secret and noone wants to share it with me. I'm still left to figure it out on my own. I will eventually.
3. Those that do know figure I'm too dumb to understand their replies. I guess that is OK, too.

 

[raoul5788]

OK. I'm feeling a lot better now. When I came home from my trip, I was really feeling stupid. I just couldn't for the life of me figure out why I had so many problems in Wyoming and I was expecting, frankly, to immediately get a reply to my request that started with "hey dummy." With only one reply so far, I figure:
1. No one knows off the top of their head what I was doing wrong. This just means I have to try to research it and figure it out for myself. (I don't buy that folks in Wyoming cannot aim DirecTV)
2. It is a deep, dark secret and noone wants to share it with me. I'm still left to figure it out on my own. I will eventually.
3. Those that do know figure I'm too dumb to understand their replies. I guess that is OK, too.

It sounds to me like you were aimed at the wrong satellite. Perhaps the elevation was set wrong or possibly the mast was not plumb.

 

[texasbrit]

You forgot:
4. There is a strange magnetic anomoly in Wyoming, generated by secret government research, that causes compasses not to work correctly...

 

[chasfm11]

texasbrit said

There is a strange magnetic anomoly in Wyoming, generated by secret government research, that causes compasses not to work correctly.

Ya know, I thought of that one, too. I know that its hard to believe but I do have a separate compass and, after 15-20 minutes of trying to figure things out, I decided to "get back to basics". I put the tripod on the opposite side of the road from the RV (I have a 75 foot cable)just to make sure that I wasn't getting any metal interference on the compass. I drew a line in the dirt which was the extention of the north-south axis on either side of the compass and double checked it. I sat the tripod on top of that line and made sure that it was as perfectly lined up as I could make it. I freely admit that it could have been a degree or two off, even with all of that.

The tripod has a bubble level on it. I set it perfectly plumb with that and then went in to get the level that I use to level the RV and doubled checked that, too.

When I tried to do the alignment, I swung the azimuth on the tripod 20 degrees further east than the point where where I lost the signal from the satellite (I'm assuming it was 119) and couldn't find another signal. My reasoning was that the same dish should pick up both and if they were further apart than that, aligning between the two would be extremely difficult. I then went just past the western limit of the signal that I found, and then went 20 degrees further west. I took the elevation to the top of the signal that I found and repeated going 20 degrees past the azimuth settings again. I do understand that I need to make those swings in super slow motion so it took almost 5 minutes just performing those two sweeps.

I figured that the deer or the bears in Yellowstone must have created a magnetic field that threw my compass off if that was truly the cause. The more I think about it, however, the more I wonder why if I did find 119 (and I definitely had signal strength from something that the receiver recognized so it wasn't the Dish Network bird), why I couldn't find the 101, too. Now, I regret not going 30 degrees on either side of the signal but that just seems like a lot of variance to me.

Maybe, I just stick to camping in Texas. I never have problems here.

 

[raoul5788]

texasbrit said

Ya know, I thought of that one, too. I know that its hard to believe but I do have a separate compass and, after 15-20 minutes of trying to figure things out, I decided to "get back to basics". I put the tripod on the opposite side of the road from the RV (I have a 75 foot cable)just to make sure that I wasn't getting any metal interference on the compass. I drew a line in the dirt which was the extention of the north-south axis on either side of the compass and double checked it. I sat the tripod on top of that line and made sure that it was as perfectly lined up as I could make it. I freely admit that it could have been a degree or two off, even with all of that.

The tripod has a bubble level on it. I set it perfectly plumb with that and then went in to get the level that I use to level the RV and doubled checked that, too.

When I tried to do the alignment, I swung the azimuth on the tripod 20 degrees further east than the point where where I lost the signal from the satellite (I'm assuming it was 119) and couldn't find another signal. My reasoning was that the same dish should pick up both and if they were further apart than that, aligning between the two would be extremely difficult. I then went just past the western limit of the signal that I found, and then went 20 degrees further west. I took the elevation to the top of the signal that I found and repeated going 20 degrees past the azimuth settings again. I do understand that I need to make those swings in super slow motion so it took almost 5 minutes just performing those two sweeps.

I figured that the deer or the bears in Yellowstone must have created a magnetic field that threw my compass off if that was truly the cause. The more I think about it, however, the more I wonder why if I did find 119 (and I definitely had signal strength from something that the receiver recognized so it wasn't the Dish Network bird), why I couldn't find the 101, too. Now, I regret not going 30 degrees on either side of the signal but that just seems like a lot of variance to me.

Maybe, I just stick to camping in Texas. I never have problems here.

It sounds like you were doing everything right, but I would not trust the bubble level on the tripod. Check it with a good level to be sure.