Dish set-up

[Matt34]

Originally Posted by Curious123

I have got the cheap ISS rubbish dish but I have not had any problems with picking up the various satellites apart from BADR 26E Dubai One channels which seems to need slight tweaking but which I always seem to lose once I move away from it. I moved my dish from one end of the garden to other and I am now picking up a lot on the west that my house blocking but I am not picking up anything east of 28.2E. Is there anything worth picking up after 28.2E?

Hi Curious123

I haven’t had any particular problems with signal strength/quality with the ISS dish once its pointing in the right direction. My issue is with the amount of play and flex in the bracket and its apparent tendancy to be moved by the wind just enough to knock it off beam. Given how critical the alignment and tracking of the arc is, I am just a bit dissapointed with the engineering of the bracket. It should be easy to enough to make a bracket with tighter tolerances/better build quality for not a lot of money.

With respect to satellites, I can currently only see between 7w and 30ish East due to the position of my house. A second dish on the front of the house would get me the western satellites, but has seriously limited Wife Appoval Factor (have to work on that one over time!)

Cheers

Matt

[fackie]

is it just me or LNBs lose strength with time? feels like I'm having to re-align my dish more often these days...

[Matt34]

Don't know about LNBs as I'm new to this lark, but I would guess there will also be deterioration in the quality of the connections as the copper will gradually oxidise over time.

I've used the silicone grease trick on my connections (which I'm told should help). Is there anything else that people do to maintain the best performance?