Here are The Precise Steps to Properly Adjust your Satellite Dish on Your Own!

It isn’t easy to correctly adjust a satellite antenna with a simple digital receiver. First, you have to move the dish to the correct position slowly. Suppose the signal is finally available as soon as bad weather conditions appear. In that case, you may lose the picture or be distorted because of most manufacturers’ inaccurate mountings. Fortunately, there are a few clues on how to adjust the dish with minimal effort correctly. In this article, you will learn the basics of satellite dish adjustment.

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Modern Direct to home(DTH) satellites transmit high-power signals so that they can be received with small 60cm dishes or flat dishes. If there are reception problems, they usually don‘t occur because of the small dish size but because of poor alignment. In the old analog days, the mounting systems didn‘t have to be precise. But nowadays, it‘s necessary to adjust the dish to one degree and lock it correctly.

The antenna mount sometimes makes it very hard to adjust the dish correctly.

    To easily adjust the elevation of your dish, most manufacturers add a scale to the mounting, but very often, these scales are too small. Most scales are also unreadable(see pic above), or you can‘t see them during adjustment. The situation worsens when you try to adjust the azimuth angle, there‘s no scale available, and you have to move the dish until you finally find the correct signal.

     Of course, you can only move the dish when the brackets are open, and if the manufacturer used just one pair of brackets instead of two, the dish‘s elevation angle would change while fixating the brackets again. Furthermore, you‘ll soon experience that the SATELLITE dish changes its elevation angle and starts to slide down the mounting pole. In this situation, adjusting the dish yourself is impossible, especially if you‘re trying to mount it on a roof and the receiver is far away in your living room.

If you want to try it anyway, here are a few clues that will help you to complete your work successfully

Satellite dish adjustment First step:  Good preparation  is half the job

* You should only buy an antenna with a visible elevation scale. Also, check that the dish uses two pairs of mounting brackets.

* Work together and install a communication line between the person operating the receiver and the other one installing the dish.

* Find the South direction (in the Southern hemisphere, you would look for the North) by using a compass, GPS device, or construction plans of your house or wait until noon; at that time, the sun will be directly in your south direction (North in the Southern hemisphere).

* Find your local geographic data by using software like Google Earth or if available, a GPS device. Hellobox B1 Bluetooth satellite finder comes in handy here. You can also use the data of a bigger city nearby, adding or reducing, as a rule of thumb 1° for every 100km away from that place.

* Use these coordinates to calculate your local elevation by using tools like www.TELE-satellite.com/fxpos.exe and setup that value on the elevation scale of your dish.

Find the signal by slowly moving your antenna.

    Now take care that the mounting pole is installed perpendicular; if its position is ok, install your dish on the mounting pole and adjust it first to the south(north). Now you need an extra pair of brackets and install it under the antenna mounting so the dish can‘t slide down the mounting pole. Of course, you can remove them after the installation is complete. The second person should start the receiver and tune to a valid channel on the desired satellite. Slowly move the dish to the east or west until you‘ve reached the position FXPOS calculated

for your azimuth angle. Now the receiver or your satellite finder should already show a signal; if it does not, move the dish slightly further. Suppose you can‘t find a valid signal. In that case, your elevation angle is probably not correctly adjusted, so move the dish back to the south, adjust the elevation by 1,2, or even 3 degrees, and repeat the whole procedure until you finally get a signal.

Satellite dish adjustment final step: Fine-tuning for your dish to optimize the reception results

    The last step to perfect signal reception is fine-tuning your antenna. It must be performed accurately so your dish will work in bad weather conditions and show you all available transponders.

* Nearly every digital receiver shows a quality indicator bar or even a numeric value (usually by pressing the info button), so it‘s up to your aid to tell you these values while fine-tuning the antenna.

* If no one’s available to help, you can also use one of those cheap satellite seekers, which you have to install between your antenna and the receiver by using F-plugs so that it gets power from your receiver. Its sensitivity is not as high as the one of a professional gauge, but it‘s ok to determine the best position for an already found satellite.

* If you want to change your dishes adjustment frequently to different satellites, you should consider buying a DiSEqC switch. These switches work very accurately in 1/10° steps, and you can quickly receive all available satellites with just one single LNB. Furthermore, they always use two pairs of mounting brackets.