No Signal on Every Other Transponder?? Dish Says Bad Cable?

[Offroad]

but by this time, you probably have the experience to do it - assuming you understand what the "skew" actually is for. If not, let us know and someone will explain it.

I'd appreciate an explanation of what skew is for, thanks.

Since my mast wasn't installed vertical anyway after I tweaked the elevation and horizontal movements for maximum signal, and I did also adjust the skew.

I pretty much just watched the signal strength on the sat finder and tried to set all of them up so that any movment in any direction results in the signal getting weaker. This way it would seem things would be in the middle of the strongest signal.

If there is a strategy thats preferable to whats in the 811 manual for Dish alignment I'd love to hear that also.

I'm probably going to order a 3ghz ground block and barrel connectors and realign the dish from scratch. I know it probably won't improve things much if any but it will be a learning experience for when friends or I have problems in the future.

Thanks again for any/all advice.

 

[SimpleSimon]

OK. Skew is normally just "set to the number" and left alone. That requires the mast to be absolutely plumb.

Skew sets the relative "height" of the 2 "eyes". This is needed because the satellites are NOT at the same elevation above the horizon (unless you are at 114.5 w longitude).

If you play with your Point Dish screen and tell it you have Dish 300 and note the numbers for 110 & 119, then check those against the D500 numbers you'll see that D500 is pretty much an 'average' for azimuth and elevation. Skew compensates for the elevation being "off".

Note: There's no need to compensate for the azimuth - the size of the dish takes care of that.

So, once you've got a decent basic signal, adjust skew to 'balance' the 2 birds and lock it down, then go back to azimuth & elevation for fine-tuning. This should give you the best overall - but expect 119 to lose a bit.

You may not be happy with whwere you end up, so always keep track of where you were.