@kenbarbi
Kyle, I am in SLC near the international airport. I would be glad to help out if I can. My email is [email protected].
I notice that Salem is near to Loafer Mountain. How close to the mountain are you, and can you overcome the elevation of the mountain to reach the satellite? You could have a horizon problem.
Jerry
@Kyle_Roberts @kenbarbi @Syed, My apologies for the late reply, the network has been goofy all day since a power outage at 9:13 this morning.
I am using an old moto-sat dish, have great SNR of +5.25 with RSSI of -61 (amplified like @kenbarbi).
Last time I tried it with bare LNB, I was measuring around -9 to -11 SNR.
Kyle says he is trying at 284° but that is way off. For his zip code, SES-2 (87W) should be at an elevation of 41.2°, Azimuth True at 152.9° or Azimuth Magnetic at 145.1° …
And it should be pointing to the South East, not West. You won’t see status until you are receiving packets…
When I first looked up pointing directions for the SES 2 satellite it pointed me to the southwest. Basically a mirror image on the compass for the coordinates you provided.
So I looked it up again and got the following coordinates. Please confirm if these are correct:
There’s a great visual pointing aid at https://www.dishpointer.com/ - you can see on the map whether your marker ist placed right. When i input your data (Long west is negative…) i roughly get the same numbers that you got as a result. Polarizsation is important as thats the amount of degrees you have to twist the LNB in the bracket from vertical alignment.
The best method is if you know your exact Lat/Long and use that as opposed to a general location as I did.
@Kyle_Roberts Kyle, also I would recommend to leave the frequency at 121032 until you have acquired the sat. At my location I had to modify it to get SNR better with my particular rig. However, I do have another Dreamcatcher that is set up portable that is spot on 121032, and modifying it either up or down actually degrades performance.
Just to add one more bit of info, magnetic declination for UT should be -11.1, so my original figures from Dishpointer were off there, also.
Ok - I was able to acquire something. Data is coming in to the status tab.
It’ll fluctuate between “unknown” stream and a few others.
here are my questions now:
How do I know which way is “up” for skew rotation? My LNB doesn’t have any marks on the black or white parts so it’s hard to know what the proper rotation is.
How do I know if I’ve acquired the right satellite? Will the stream indicate the correct info?
I noticed as the stream fluctuated, the bitrate, packet rate and audio bitrate would change and then a “transfers” line would show up periodically but wouldn’t ever stay. This is all happening while I’m not moving the LNB. It’s just bouncing back and forth between streams.
You are likely receiving Othernet. This receiver won’t pick up anything else when set up per the instructions. When your LNB’s connector is straight down, skew is at Zero. You may need a protractor to get close, however, if you can watch the SNR as you turn it, you should see a slight increase (less negative in value) when you are close to the correct spot.
It sounds like you are very close, but not acquiring a “lock” yet. You might try to cut down on the terrestrial noise by forming a “cone” around the LNB. This will help your SNR, which you will need to have above a -14 to get a lock. The RSSI will not change a lot, but SNR setting is the key to getting a lock. A 12-ounce soft drink cup lined with aluminum foil or aluminum duct tape sometimes will work wonders.
Once you achieve lock, the numbers will stabilize. The trick now is to just gently move the LNB until that happens.
