Location Of Satellite Positions Without Using sat finder.....Know how to Locate your Degree.......

locating the right position for you satellite Dish  is really a fundamental basis for any Installer... and statistic shows that over 70 to 80% of Installers in Nigeria do not use any sat finder, they enjoy and learn doing it manually.... I am one of them #winks

In this article i will be explaining how we can locate any degree we are sorting for, i know we might have heard some regular positions like:-  eutelsat 36East, Nilesat 7west, Abs 3west, e.t.c.

Every installer should have a foresight of where and how a satellite dish should be positioned, even if you are using a sat finder you should not start looking for a degree @west for another in East.

FIRSTLY
Let me explain the basic cardinal points just like we learnt in our Geography. we have four cardinal points which are North, West, East, and South.

from the image above, we see the labeling of the points and its positions.... but for Satellite dish installation we work with either west or east....there is no satellite tv in other  position.. there might be but for me i havent done any...but west and east are the ones we use.
note: because east is at the right hand do not mean any position at east should face right else you are on your own.

Now that we know we can either track from the west or from the east.. north and south is out from it..  

HOW CAN I LOCATE THE DEGREES

here are some must know information in locating your degree..

• the lower the degree (for e.g 3, 4, 7 degrees), the higher you elevate your dish:- this means the smaller the degree of the satellite dish the higher you raise your dish in the sense that, your dish faces up. check the pix below

  

  @4 degrees

  
  

  

  @36 degrees

From the above pix: take a good look the first dish, it  faces up at a lower degree  which is 4degrees and the second pixs goes down a little @36 degrees. this explains our rule no 1. the lower the degree the higher you elevates your dish.

• the lower the degree the higher you go and movement is to the right(pls note the higher means elevating the dish to face up not moving the pole higher. :-for instance lets say you tracked 36degrees like the second pics.. if you want to track 20degrees you will need to adjust your dish(standing at the back please) to face up and move to the right, also if you want to track 65 degrees from 36 degrees you bring the dish down i.e face down and moving to the left... note again: you should always be at the back of your dish while tracking,  its better and i am speaking base on that.. But for west the lower the degree you move to the left and the higher the degree you move to the right... just vice versa. but the upward adjustments carries the same rule: which is the lower the degree the higher you elevate the dish.

 

Adjusting from the back

• key notes: 

Which ever way you point your dish depends on where you are. Location matters your east in ibadan can be different from how my east will face in kaduna.. but they all point to one sat.

As there are 360 degrees on a compass, there are 180 degrees to the West, and 180 degrees to the East. Satellites are in orbit over Earth's equator.

And there is what we call Azimuth when locating positions for different satellite degrees in different positions...Azimuth means how far around from North you need to point. Or the direction in relation North. but this is best understood when using a pointer or a compass... this is a topic for another day here we want to learn it manually without a compass.


take note: the lowest degree of west and east is zero (0) and the highest degrees is 180. which implies

2degree east is close to 2degrees west.... and 180 degree west is close to 175 degree east... carry out the practical yourself for better understanding.

Satellite Footprint, beams, signal strength and dish size

Footprint:  means the area which can receive the signal from the satellite. also the dish size required in order to pick up a reliable signal from a particular satellite, may differ. in some cases you can use the  smallest size of dish which is 45cm and other common sizes are up to 60cm, 80cm and even larger dish size, depending on how far from the footprint area you are. Also the quality of your satellite equipment, especially the LNB dictates on which signals you will receive and how reliable they are.

Each satellite has many "beams" which can be pointing at different areas of the Earth. Certain channels are only broadcast on specific beams. Therefore you may not receive all channels in a particular beam, for instance, if you are in Africa you may not be able to get the channels which are broadcasted on the UK beam as it's footprint is fairly tight over the UK. To get the channels and satellite on your footprint visit Here

if for example you are in a open field and you dont know your east just randomly try a sat for e.g Intelsat 20@ 68.5east ku band ...try it out note the dish should not be elevated very high for 68degree because the degree is large. search for the sat once you get it you can now follow from its direction to know how to locate other sat.

NEXT ARTICLE WOULD BE: FIXING SOME ERRORS ENCOUNTERED DURING DISH INSTALLATION:- You might know where the position is but you are not getting the signal......stay tuned for my next post i will be listing some errors and mistakes we make or we overlook.

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i hope you enjoyed this