Need help with new dish install

[ironworker]

Greeting everyone.

I just purchased a Winegard 18" portable dish for my RV. I have Direct TV in the house and when I ordered a DVR it left me with an extra receiver.

I took the old receiver (Samsung) called Direct TV and had them activate it (few hours ago). I then when outside attempting to install this dish so I knew the ropes before attemting this on a family vacation in the middle of nowhere.

I set the dish to the azimuth to my local zip code and went threw the steps of finding a satellite signal with no luck, after about an hour I gave up.

The receiver is not able to detect the satellite dish?? I figure that's why I can find signal.
Looking at the dish there isn't much that could be bad is there?

Hoping some of you might know the answers to my questions.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Rich

 

[charper1]

How is the dish mounted? Is the mast true (plumb & level on all sides)? If not, then your coordinates (elevation & azimuth) on the dish will be inaccurate. What coordinates are you using and what is your zip code for your current test location?

The LNB could be bad, but I doubt that if it is brand new.

 

[ironworker]

The dish itself is a portable model. It sits on a circular stand and is suppose to sit directly on the ground.

Shouldn't the receiver see there is a dish attached?

during setup it says "could not detect the dish, check wires from receiver to dish" I did check the wires. I replaced the wire it came with and still the receiver could not detect the dish.

For the life of me I can't see what could be wrong with the dish but the box should see that there is one attached even if you didn't have the azimuth dialed in no?

The problem is, I'm new to this stuff.
Any other thoughts?

Rich

 

[ironworker]

Charper, thanks for the reply.

Rich

 

[charper1]

The receiver will only detect something if there is a signal to "see". AND a signal is what it will detect, not the dish; it assumes one is connected.

 

[ironworker]

In the setup screen it asks for auto detect of satellite.

You know more than I do, So i will try it again tomorrow.

Thanks for the input.

Rich

 

[charper1]

Manually set it to single LNB; or whatever your make & model of receiver calls it. It just wants to know the dish type; single, dual or triple. Its not trying to auto-detect anything else and I have read that some non-OEM type dishes won't work with that, but I don't know. BUT the dish type is all it wants and it is too easy to set it manually to worry with.