Where to point Sky dish...

[LSainsbury]

Hi,

OK - I know the basics - point your dish with LNB at the Sky satellite. Our current dish is pointing south, but are there other Sky satellites I could point it at, if the dish was attached to a different side of the house?

Cheers

Lee

[AntiSilence]

Point it to towards the sky, pointing at the ground won't be any good. Oh, and make sure it's on the outside of the house!

[foreverwar]

This might help

[LSainsbury]

Originally Posted by AntiSilence

Point it to towards the sky, pointing at the ground won't be any good. Oh, and make sure it's on the outside of the house!

Thanks for that AntiSilence...

---------- Post added at 19:00 ---------- Previous post was at 18:56 ----------

Originally Posted by foreverwar

This might help

And thanks FW - just found the same info (near word for word) on another site.

The problem that I was trying to work out is - our new house is half way up a hill and I was trying to work out in which direction the dish should go. I have a suspicion that the line of sight might be blocked by other houses...

And as part of our agreements, we are not allowed to put a dish above the eves of the house....

---------- Post added at 19:16 ---------- Previous post was at 19:00 ----------

Just found this - excellent tool!!

[Losttheplot]

I'm think it needs to point almost due south for Sky.
I've always used a spectrum analyser, which makes the job a lot easier.
If you are using a Sky dish then it has built in spirit levels to tell you when the elevation is correct. So its a case of getting it levelled and then pan it till you hit the right sat.

[popper]

the simple rule of thumb is to think of direct south,get your kids toy compass or make one with a used matchstick and a pin thats been on a magnet for a while, and attach pin to matchstick and place it in the dish of water (full of interesting facts i am LOL) ,and it will point out magnetic north and south, right were was i, ohh yeah.

think of direct magnetic due south as 12oclock, you want to make the dish point to somewere near 11Oclock, a few degrees eather side depending on if you can get pure line of sight , if not you can look for a bounced signal but all bets are off finding that without the meter.....

i forget the ROT for the vertical, perhaps someone else can give you another interesting fact LOL to do that....

[Losttheplot]

I missread the original post. There are a number of satellites which make up the Sky platform, but as they are 23,500miles away, they appear as a single source and your single dish catches them all, you dont need to repoint.
There are other satellites, Astra 1 and Hotbird for example, which have english programming (mainly other languages tho). If you really want to play satellites, then get a steerable dish. You need a non sky box however, it looks for a certain transponder for boot up.

[AntiSilence]

Originally Posted by LSainsbury

Thanks for that AntiSilence...

No problem, glad I can help! LOL

[popper]

but have you got a rule of thumb he can use for the vertical?

ohh another thing i just remembered , and many people forget this.

when you point the dish you need to take into consideration that the actual point of reception is a mirror image of the LMB arm.

what i mean is imagine you take the dish and put it on the flat ground, then think of the letter V the left side of the V will have the LMB attached on its arm yes?, well the right hand side will be the direction the signal is coming in from if you see what i mean.

so you need to keep that in mind for pointing the dish, you need to visualise that right hand side of the angle as thats your line of sight line to point with, not the LMB arm or dead center point of the dish.

does that make sense to you?.

[Losttheplot]

Originally Posted by popper

but have you got a rule of thumb he can use for the vertical?

ohh another thing i just rememebered , and many people forget this.

when you point the dish you need to take into consideration that the actual point of reception is a mirror image of the LMB arm.

what i mean is imagine you take the dish and put it on the flat ground, then think of the letter V the left side of the V will have the LMB attached on it arm yes?, well the right hand side will be the direction the signal is coming in from if you see what i mean.

so you ned to keep that in mind for pointing the dish you need to visualise that right hand side of the angle as thats your line of sight line to point with not the LMB arm or dead center point of the dish.

does that make sense to you?.

Theres no rule of thumb as such. On professional dishes (I'm talking 3metres) I've used an inclinometer, theres computer programs which if you know your position it can tell you the inclination (or call it elevation or vertical). You set the dish at the required elevation/incline and then simply pan the dish until you get your required signal.
You set one known quantity (elevation) then scan the other required quantity(direction).
But as I said, the Sky dishes have a spirit level so you can find the elevation, then you again pan until you have the direction. The spirit level has been set to find Skys sat position for the UK.

[Horace]

Originally Posted by LSainsbury

Hi,

OK - I know the basics - point your dish with LNB at the Sky satellite. Our current dish is pointing south, but are there other Sky satellites I could point it at, if the dish was attached to a different side of the house?

Cheers

Lee

Sky don't own satellites, they lease transponders off SES in the case of Sky Digital UK.
If you want to see what you could receive from the UK try http://www.lyngsat.com/europe.html .Sky UK uses the satellites at 28.2E. Most of the other positions are occupied by non-English programming. Personally I can see satellites from the whole of that arc, that doesn't mean all, as some have beams directed towards America, Brazil or Israel. Hotbird at 13E is a good place to start as it's a very strong satellite (in signal terms) and has unencrypted programming from around the world which could be watched with any cheap free to air receiver. I know the Sky receiver I used to own would allow you to scan all frequencies but limited the SR options. As for finding Sky's position in the sky, looking to see where the other dishes in the area are pointing would be a fairly good start, then you'd need to tweak the signal. I couldn't imagine trying to set a dish up without a meter but it could be done with a lot of patience.

[Losttheplot]

Originally Posted by Horace

Sky don't own satellites, they lease transponders off SES in the case of Sky Digital UK.

Sky also use Eutelsat's Eurobird 1, not just Astra.

[Mr_love_monkey]

I always thought you had to point it at where the sun is at 10am in the morning...

.. but maybe I'm thinking of something else...

[foreverwar]

Originally Posted by Mr_love_monkey

I always thought you had to point it at where the sun is at 10am in the morning...

.. but maybe I'm thinking of something else...

As long as you have plenty of lotion on it, you should be ok.

[Kymmy]

Problem is that most sats are either foriegn language or encrypted. I have a steerable 1 meter dish connected to an old analogue pace box and a DGS Mutant digital reciever. The main groups with english language (or have an english sub audio) are HOTBIRD 13E (Spanish, German and other euro/North african networks), Astra 19.2E (this is the old Astra position which used to be used for the analogue signal and not digital but now carries a lot of French channels)

There's still some unencrypted analogue on 19.2E but these are mainly German though Eurosport is FTA and has an english sub-audio.

Remember though that most of the channels (films, fox, national geo) you'd want to watch are encrypted using Nagravision 3 which needs a subscription

Kymmy