Pointing meter for Wildblue dish antenna ?

At the moment, Wildblue is only using two satellite; both Ka-band, and both at 111.2W longitude. They also employ regular L-band on the RX. That means that any old cheap signal strength meter can easily find the only two Ka-band satellites currently providing Wildblue service.

That's the easy part. Once the satellite is found, a proprietary meter must be used. Wildblue calls it their APA (antenna pointing aid). It's basically a selectable filter that discriminates among several frequencies available within the downlink spectrum. When you can find them, expect to pay upwards from USD100.

The APA itself is really just a filter. Wildblue will generate an installation order that contains a filter setting. The APA goes inline with the signal strength meter, and is set to the filter position specified in the installation order. From there you follow normal antenna adjusting procedures to acquire and optimize the signal specific to that particular connection.

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