I cant take this anymore ... thread follow up.

[coisado]

yeah i know the angle guage is incorrect, but like i said i can move the dish all around and the sat finder does not change in the least.

 

[Tron]

I would ditch that sat finder and use a receiver/small TV at your dish. I find this method is FAR easier than using those sat meters.

Trying to use just a PCI card to aim a dish is almost impossible. Do you have an old DirecTV or Dish Network receiver laying around? If you don't have a FTA receiver, these will work for peaking your dish. They cannot, however, move the motor. A DirecTV receiver will help you find 101w using the circular (C) side of the Invacom, then you can hook the linear (L) side of your Invacom up to the PCI card and you should be able to get KUIL in Beaumont, TX., along with several other channels. Until you get something to verify that your setup works, I'd keep the motor out of the equation and just go with a fixed setup. It should take no time at all to find 101w with a DirecTV receiver and a small TV by your dish.

The PCI card software will work on circular LNBs (and the circular side of the Invacom), just set your L.O. to 11250. For linear, set your L.O. to 10750. Once you find 101w, don't move the dish, just hook up the linear side of the LNB to your PCI card. L.O. will be 10750. Make sure power is off before hooking up or disconnecting LNBFs.

 

[coisado]

So it looks like i should ditch the pci card for now and set it up with a stb. what are the diferences for set top boxes? Would the little cheap ones work as well as the more expensive. I know that I would want one with power scan. I just want some information before i go plunking more cash into this sinking boat of a hobby. I guess i would be less reluctant to purchase it if I had already had some kind on success.

 

[PSB]

You want one with power/blind scan and USALS, but really any receiver with a LIVE Transponder entered can be used to point a dish!

 

[hwh]

So it looks like i should ditch the pci card for now and set it up with a stb. what are the diferences for set top boxes? Would the little cheap ones work as well as the more expensive. I know that I would want one with power scan. I just want some information before i go plunking more cash into this sinking boat of a hobby. I guess i would be less reluctant to purchase it if I had already had some kind on success.

The Fortec Lifetime Classic NA is a good receiver with blind scan. It's $129.00 plus shipping from our sponsor Sadoun (link is at the top of the page).

It's good to have both a STB and a pci or usb receiver. I use the usb one (a DVBWorld) to watch 4:2:2 feeds that the STB can't decode. I'm not sure if the card you have decodes the 4:2:2 feeds or not.

That said, before I'd give up on the card I'd setup the dish on the tripod, hook the C output of the LNB to the receiver, and point the dish at 119 (177.7 degrees on the compass, 42.8 elevation). Set the LNB freq to 11250, the transponder to 12370 V, SR (symbol rate) to 20000, and look for the NASA channel. Using the DSS satellite gives you a much stronger signal to work with and eliminates having to set/tweak the skew on the lnb.

If you can get that working there's music available on that sat on transponders 12268 H, 12297 H, 12326 H, 12384 H, 12399 V, 12443 H, 12472 H, 12486 V, 12501 H, and 12516 V. Also Angel One TV (a religious channel) on 12428 V.

Once you've done that you can play with the software to get familiar with it before you move on to finding other satellites.