Aligning Dish

[andreah1]

Back in August I posted about our roof being replaced and what to do about dish alignment, etc. Well, 3 months later and FINALLY the roof is going on today. Don't even go there, sore subject but this is the life I get dealt when my brother is a contractor, family always comes last. Luckily here in upstate ny we are having a super warm (in the 60's) day so I'm not too worried about the actual roofing but I know the dish is going to be screwed up. I did purchase the Retrodeck mounting system, it looks pretty nice and my brother is doing that for me of course while he's up there. He's doing his best to get it in the same spot but because of the different mount I'm sure it will be off a mile.
Luckily I was able to get an appt. for tomorrow afternoon so life won't come to a complete stand still but I wondered if there is anything I can do myself to try to get the dish aligned at least enough to see programming? Or is it a lost cause? I have a few more hours before I get home from work to see if we got lucky or not. Should I not mess with it and wait for the tech tomorrow? Any settings from the inside that can be fiddled with? I assume we'll still be able to watch DVR programming?
Thanks as always....

 

[Scherrman]

Back in August I posted about our roof being replaced and what to do about dish alignment, etc. Well, 3 months later and FINALLY the roof is going on today. Don't even go there, sore subject but this is the life I get dealt when my brother is a contractor, family always comes last. Luckily here in upstate ny we are having a super warm (in the 60's) day so I'm not too worried about the actual roofing but I know the dish is going to be screwed up. I did purchase the Retrodeck mounting system, it looks pretty nice and my brother is doing that for me of course while he's up there. He's doing his best to get it in the same spot but because of the different mount I'm sure it will be off a mile.
Luckily I was able to get an appt. for tomorrow afternoon so life won't come to a complete stand still but I wondered if there is anything I can do myself to try to get the dish aligned at least enough to see programming? Or is it a lost cause? I have a few more hours before I get home from work to see if we got lucky or not. Should I not mess with it and wait for the tech tomorrow? Any settings from the inside that can be fiddled with? I assume we'll still be able to watch DVR programming?
Thanks as always....

You can go ahead and try but if you can't get it working in under an hour I would give up and just wait for the tech tomorrow. You should still be able to watch your recordings off your DVR though.

 

[bigjohnok]

you could always haul a receiver and small tv out to the dish and run some extension cords and use the signal meter on the receiver and connect directly to the dish and point and peak that way.

first make sure your mast is plumb both vertical and horizontal and since the dish is already built you should be in the ball park if the mast is mounted right. all you should have to do is swing the dish left to right or vice versa until the signal level pop in. now you may have to tweak the elevation settings but it should not be more than a degree or two.

to get to that screen hit menu>installation>point dish.
at least I think its in that order.

 

[sam_gordon]

Hopefully when your dish was taken down the elevation wasn't changed. If so, this is a relatively easy procedure.

As mentioned, bring a receiver and tv to somewhere near your dish. Make sure the mounting pole is plumb and put the dish on (do whatever you can to NOT mess with the elevation).

Hook up the dish to the receiver, and go to the menu system for installation. Pan the dish left to right slowly. If you have a general idea of where the dish was pointing before, you can start there.

 

[bigjohnok]

another thing write down you elevation setting if you have to mess with that.

 

[Martinash]

Best thing you can do is to make sure:

1. Retrodeck is in the spot where dish was mounted which will prevent LOS issues if any.
2. Ask your brother to attach mast to retrodeck and check if it will allow for mast to be plumb. If so, just slide dish on it and with your brother being on the roof and you in front of tv communicating by phone you can try to get signal using menu 6-1-1. If it works great, if not you leave rest to tech.

Even if it does work tech will tweak your dish to get you best possible signal.

 

[andreah1]

That's out of my league bigjohnok, I have no plans on climbing on the roof, and def. not with one of my hoppers! I can already see that disaster! I think I may just have to wait for the tech. Might be able to talk the hubs into climbing up there while I'm in the house and see if we can just move it side to side to see what happens.....My brother thinks that because the new mount is a little different we may be off vertically as well. May just be something we shouldn't mess around with.
Ouch, my husband just called and said when he turns on the receiver there is NOTHING there, nothing in the recordings, nothing....all the movies and shows we had saved are gone. What is going on? Why would they be missing?

 

[andreah1]

I think the dish is already up, I'm not there to be able to tell them what to do unfortunately so just had to rely on him reading the directions and putting it up. See my other post about recordings too, I'm flipping stressed about that.....

 

[andreah1]

Our recordings have shown up (phew), must have been a delay for some reason. No one here besides me wanted to fiddle with the dish, it's pretty darn windy, so we're going to hang tight til tomorrow to have the tech do it.