Satellite Dish Aiming.
Over the years I have tried just about every tool on the market for dish alignment. Dishes have ranged from a 18 inch round with one output to an oval dish with 4 outputs to the latest SWM technology. I will attempt to give a basic breakdown of the various tools.
Basic compass. Useful for helping point your dish in the correct direction. It will do nothing helping you avoid obstructions.
Basic signal meter. Will help you tune into a satellite. It will not tell you if you have the correct bird or not. Because a lot of the satellites are very close together, you can very easily lock onto the wrong bird.
Phone apps like Dishpointer. Great tool for allowing you to locate a spot to place the dish and will help you find clear view of the southern sky.
More sophisticated tools.
Align-A-Site. This is a great tool, albeit a bit expensive. Upon setup the instructions tell you to level and plum the tri-pod like in your garage, Mount the dish and set with all angles at exactly zero. Then you permanently mount the base to the dish. This is the last time you actually have to plum the tri-pod. Once the base is installed, you take the settings from your provider for your location and put these angles into the tool. Mount the tool and tilt,skew the dish so that the bubbles are centered and that your dish is pointed in the correct direction. In theory you will then be perfectly aligned. In the real world, it is very close and with some fine tuning you can have a strong signal quickly. One nice feature is the scope you can site through to ensure you have a clear view of the southern sky.
Digital meters.
There are several brands of digital meters. All of this type of meters intended purpose is to lock onto the correct bird and show the maximum signal strength for the best signal reception.
Birdog is probably the most famous of this type of meters. From my experience the big advantages of a Birdog are, you can tell the meter which bird to find, filtering out all other satellites. Other brands claim they can do this, but from my experiences this is not necessarily true. While the Birdog was designed for DirecTV it does work equally well on Dish, Ecostar and most OTA satellites. The nice thing about this type of meters is that you do not have to connect to the receiver. The meter powers the LNB, can be attached directly to the dish via a short piece of coax cable and allows the operator to setup quickly with no yelling back and forth. Once the dish is locked onto the correct bird then you connect the coax cable to the receiver and power the receiver on.
Personally I tend to use three steps. First is Dishpointer to find an open area. Second is the Align-A-Site, mainly because I already own one. Lastly I use my Birdog to fine tune and lock onto the correct satellite. This process takes me usually no more than 10 minutes for my DirecTV HD setup.
__________________
Basic compass. Useful for helping point your dish in the correct direction. It will do nothing helping you avoid obstructions.
Basic signal meter. Will help you tune into a satellite. It will not tell you if you have the correct bird or not. Because a lot of the satellites are very close together, you can very easily lock onto the wrong bird.
Phone apps like Dishpointer. Great tool for allowing you to locate a spot to place the dish and will help you find clear view of the southern sky.
More sophisticated tools.
Align-A-Site. This is a great tool, albeit a bit expensive. Upon setup the instructions tell you to level and plum the tri-pod like in your garage, Mount the dish and set with all angles at exactly zero. Then you permanently mount the base to the dish. This is the last time you actually have to plum the tri-pod. Once the base is installed, you take the settings from your provider for your location and put these angles into the tool. Mount the tool and tilt,skew the dish so that the bubbles are centered and that your dish is pointed in the correct direction. In theory you will then be perfectly aligned. In the real world, it is very close and with some fine tuning you can have a strong signal quickly. One nice feature is the scope you can site through to ensure you have a clear view of the southern sky.
Digital meters.
There are several brands of digital meters. All of this type of meters intended purpose is to lock onto the correct bird and show the maximum signal strength for the best signal reception.
Birdog is probably the most famous of this type of meters. From my experience the big advantages of a Birdog are, you can tell the meter which bird to find, filtering out all other satellites. Other brands claim they can do this, but from my experiences this is not necessarily true. While the Birdog was designed for DirecTV it does work equally well on Dish, Ecostar and most OTA satellites. The nice thing about this type of meters is that you do not have to connect to the receiver. The meter powers the LNB, can be attached directly to the dish via a short piece of coax cable and allows the operator to setup quickly with no yelling back and forth. Once the dish is locked onto the correct bird then you connect the coax cable to the receiver and power the receiver on.
Personally I tend to use three steps. First is Dishpointer to find an open area. Second is the Align-A-Site, mainly because I already own one. Lastly I use my Birdog to fine tune and lock onto the correct satellite. This process takes me usually no more than 10 minutes for my DirecTV HD setup.
__________________
