I haven,t give up on fta just want to know if anyone in central south carolina has a hint what sat to try to hit. That my have some shows on, in l or c on lnb i can,t seem to get both to work together or get my dish to move i am useing a viewsat ultra if anyone can give a hint 36in dish hh motor lnb is l one side c other I,m just to dumb to make work i guess haha
Queeny,
Try using your dish as a fixed point dish for a single satellite first (one sat at a time), rather than with the motor attached. Get accustomed to dialing in the various satellites and scanning them this way first. Connect your cable directly from your receiver to the L (linear) port of the LNBF and search for the Linear satellites only.
Doing this with the specific dish and LNBF and receiver that you have will provide you with a lot of useful information. Information such as how strong the signal can be at its best with your best alignment of the dish (barring any poor weather conditions that may exist) and which sats and TPs are strongest for your location.
Record as much data from this as you can, then install your motor and align it to reproduce this by aligning the motor and dish the best you are able to track the entire arc.
In your location, I believe that you will have many sats to dabble with. After researching many of the footprints of all the Ku and C band satellites available to North America and in most particular, to the continental US, the southeast seems to have a really admirable reception zone. Meaning that many of the satellites have a stronger signal and quality level (or EIRP) in this area and therefore a smaller dish can be used for many of them. So, basically, you have somewhat of an advantage over other areas.
EIRP is the Effective Isotropic Radiated Power, and the better this EIRP value is, the better your signal reception should be.
Review "The List" here and pick out a satellite to test. Whatever your location's longitude is, pick some satellites which have orbital positions near to that degree.
RADAR