Dish Alignment

[flyhing]

After struggling to receive French Channels on Altantic Bird 2 with my motorised 1M dish. I thought of trying to change leads to that on my Fixed Dish which was on 5 deg. west and connected to my Analogue receiver. I then received them no problem. On checking again on my Motorised dish I realised that I receive no signals from satellites to the west. Is this a dish alignment problem? I receive all the main East Satellites from 28 to 7 with no apparent drop in signal strength. Is this good signals from the east and no signals from the west indicative of a specific alignment problem?
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Paul

[BGonaSTICK]

Yes, it can be any number of problems. Your dish alignment is way off in at least one respect, and unfortunately you need to go back to first principles to rectify it.

Common causes are:

1) Mast not 100% vertical
2) Due south not attained correctly during setup
3) No line of sight
4) A combination of one or more of the above

Our motor install guide may help.

It will also help to diagnose the problem if you can work out if your dish is pointing to high or too low consistently across all western satellites, and indeed if the magnitude of the elevation error increases the more you drive the motor West. You can often test this without the need for un-clamping the dish, but by simply 'flexing' the dish face gently up and down while an assistant checks for an increase in signal strength.

This diagram might also help you visualise the potential for misalignment.