Mounting A Satellite Dish Or Rotor

3 Fixed Dish

  1. As advised in the General Introduction, find the site latitude, longitude, and the target sat longitude.  Use these to find the dish settings, azimuth, elevation, and skew:
    1. Go to the Alignment Settings Calculator page, enter appropriate values for latitude, longitude, target sat, and if required dish offset or dimensions.  Print the result for future reference.
    2. Looking here ... ... print transponder and channel details of the target sat, so that later these can be used to verify that the correct one has been found.  For most in the UK, it'll be 28.2°E.
  2. While nothing like as critical as for a rotor, it simplifies things if the fixing post is truly vertical
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    Using a spirit level with both vertical and horizontal levels, perhaps less accurately a plumb-line, measure at least two points at right-angles to each other …
  3. Find the sat's azimuth, horizontal direction, by one of the three methods explained in the General Introduction, and note a distant landmark in the required direction.
  4. To set the azimuth mount the dish on the fixing post and point it exactly at the distant landmark previously noted.
  5. If the dish has a scale and either no offset or as is usual the scale compensates for the offset, set the Calculator's Elevation directly on the scale.

    If the dish is offset but has a 'true', uncompensated scale, then the offset must be subtracted from the elevation.  The Calculator can do this automatically via How to find the dish elevation, Other.

    The Calculator can also work out the angle for a cardboard template if the dish has no scale.
  6. Once done, a signal from the sat should be received.  Before anything else check that it is the correct sat, for example by tuning in a transponder and checking what is being broadcast against the sat's Lyngsat page.  Once certain of the correct sat, fine tune the dish settings using a sat finder or the receiver's signal data.