Direct TV Satellite Aiming in Canada
Heading to Banff and Jasper AB. in the spring. We have Direct TV and use a dish on a tripod. Has anyone used Direct in Canada and know what are the settings for the satellite dish in this area?
Forum Discussion
I don't know much about DirecTV dishes/LNBs because we're on Bell satellites 82 & 91. If you really want to know for sure, what you can do is look up the footprint coverage map(s) (by some googling) and find the radiated power (EIRP) for the satellites you want to pick up. This will tell you if you need a larger dish to get more of the signal. It looks like DirecTV has decent coverage well into Canada tho.
If you know the exact angles for aiming and know how to set them up, it makes finding a satellite a LOT easier so you don't have to spend forever sweeping back and forth to find it. Azimuth is easy and if you get an inclinometer you can set the elevation to within a degree or two. If the signal is strong enough you can just look for other direcTV dishes around you or if in Canada and everyone else is using Shaw or Bell sats, you can look up those azimuths and adjust yours to get approx. angles then fine tune. Using one LNB/satellite would make it a lot easier so you don't have to fiddle with skew also.
The dishpointer app is super cool! Sometimes you can have just a small hole between trees on your site. It might be a good idea to have some extra coax (RG6) if you need to have the dish farther away from the site. A guy next to us last summer had a few hundred feet of it on a spool!!
If you know the exact angles for aiming and know how to set them up, it makes finding a satellite a LOT easier so you don't have to spend forever sweeping back and forth to find it. Azimuth is easy and if you get an inclinometer you can set the elevation to within a degree or two. If the signal is strong enough you can just look for other direcTV dishes around you or if in Canada and everyone else is using Shaw or Bell sats, you can look up those azimuths and adjust yours to get approx. angles then fine tune. Using one LNB/satellite would make it a lot easier so you don't have to fiddle with skew also.
The dishpointer app is super cool! Sometimes you can have just a small hole between trees on your site. It might be a good idea to have some extra coax (RG6) if you need to have the dish farther away from the site. A guy next to us last summer had a few hundred feet of it on a spool!!
