Satellite dish alignment

Try this page for satellite dish pointing in France
( If you speak french any suggestions to improve my efforts at writing in french would be appreciated. You can copy the text of the page to a word processor and then edit the text. For that matter anyone else who is french speaking is welcome to have a laugh and send in suggested text improvements. )

Regarding the satellite dish pointing page first select a satellite, e.g. Astra at 19.2 east or Hotbird at 13 east, and your location.  The result will be your dish pointing angles.  

Set the elevation (up/down) on the bracket behind the dish.

Regarding  polarisation start with your LNB upright.  For Astra add +7 to the calculated result. For Hotbird add +3.5 to the calculated result.  Then while facing towards the satellite turn the LNB anticlockwise for a negative number of degrees and clockwise for positive polarisation angles.

The  azimuth angle refers to the side to side angle.  A magnetic bearing angle of 180 is south. 90 deg means east and 270 deg means west.  

Tune your receiver to some known TV carrier (see https://www.lyngsat.com/hotbird.html or https://www.lyngsat.com/astra19.html ) that is in a beam covering France.  Read the handbook.

You only need an approximate idea of azimuth, as with the elevation set accurately a bold wide sweep of the antenna is sufficient to find the satellite first time.  Then spend at least 30 minutes peaking up in both az and el.

Regards, Eric.

The LNB may have a clamp round the feed throat which, if loosened, will allow the LNB to be rotated.  When setting up satellite TV LNBs, start with the LNB upright.  The hairline mark will be at the top.   Then rotate either way by the required angle.  Any scale may be very small or non-existent, in which case you can wrap a strip of paper round, measure the circumference. Calculate the length for 5.5 deg = circum  x 5.5 /360.  Mark the strip, reposition and turn the required amount.  It is not too critical on a receive-only system, only you suffer if it is wrong.

The calculated polarisation angle for you is -12.5 deg, add 7 for Astra and the result is -5.5 deg.   This means that while facing towards the satellite you turn the LNB 5.5 deg anticlockwise.  Not far at all.  If you adjust using the signal quality readout on the receiver turn the feed till you get a severely degraded but exactly recorded degradation, then turn to the opposite side for exactly the same degradation and half the angles.

All above assumes you have a simple dish intended to be pointed permanently at one satellite using an azimuth/elevation mount.  Quite different considerations apply if it is motor driven and your indoor box is intended to steer the dish to point at all visible satellites.  If your dish has a motor please say and we will start again.

Regards, Eric.