Croatia

[Sreser]

It says beginners start here and I am certainly a beginner!! I have a 1.0m dish and twin llbs and reciever (box!) all bought as a package from local supermarket!! When last over there just by playing about and even holding the dish in about the right place!! I got pictures. I am going back over to Croatia soon and would like advice on how to set up the dish alignment properly, so I dont have to get a friend to hold it while I watch telly!!
I am not even sure which sats I want to find with the twin llbs but the idea is to watch english speaking channels.
The lat and long for the location of the dish is 42:56:02N (42.9339) and 17:26:15E (17.4374)
No real tecky stuff please but which sats would you recommend I seek out and how do I set Azimuth and Elevation for those sats?

[BGonaSTICK]

Hi Sreser.

That certainly looks like a beautiful part of the world, even on Google Earth!

Maybe not ideal for satellite reception though

You are right on the edge (or 'fringe') of the reception area of many satellites.

The signal from the satellite(s) in space is focused on a specific area on the Earth's surface, known as the satellite beam 'footprint', and you can see by looking at the Astra satellite's footprints for example that you are indeed in the fringe area for many:

http://www.ses-astra.com/corpSite/si...leet/index.php

Most English-speaking channels are on satellites located at 28.2E, of which I think you have a chance of receiving maybe four 'beams' - Astra 2A North and South, and Astra 2B North and South. It's really going to be a case of mounting your dish properly and seeing what results you get.

There is a little English language content elsewhere. There's plenty of information on this here:

http://www.satellitehelp.co.uk/forum...ic,1609.0.html

As far as fixing and aligning your dish goes, it rather depends on where it's going to be mounted. It obviously needs to 'see' the satellite in the Sky with an unobstructed view, so locating the dish in the first place is critical. There are wall-mounting brackets and floor mounting stands (commonly called 'patio stands') - you can see a good selection of both here:

_http://www.satellitesuperstore.com/gstands.htm

I don't know whether you plan to take a mount out with you or source one from Croatia. The above store supply good quality products, but tend to be expensive.

When you say 'twin llbs' you mean LNBs - Low Noise Block down-converters. I'm also not quite sure that 'twin' is what you mean. The term 'twin' usually means a pair of LNBs in one housing using one 'feedhorn' (the bulbous 'scoop' at the from of the LNB). It has two independent outputs, but can only be pointed at one satellite. This may be what you have, or you may have a 'monobloc' setup, which is effectively two LNBs joined together, but at a fixed angle (usually six degrees apart) to receive two different satellites. These only have one output and switch between the two satellites/LNBs automatically.

Now, for alignment you could try checking out some of the utilities in this thread:

http://www.satellitehelp.co.uk/forum...opic,34.0.html

and it's worth reading some of the other threads in that section of the forum too:

http://www.satellitehelp.co.uk/forum...oard,11.0.html

As a beginner, you'll find that there's lots of reading to do, but you shouldn't be afraid of asking basic questions here if you can't find what you're looking for or don't understand something.

Regards

STICK