Tuning Satellite Dishes

Video transcription

Hi my name is Bill Barney, I'm with Community Dish in Pahrump, Nevada. I am a SBCA licensed installer. That is Satellite Broadcast Communication Association, and I would like to help you with your satellite installation. This is the meter I am going to be using on my job. When you are doing a one thousand dish it is important that you use a good meter, something that can see all three signals independently, because we are going to have to balance those signals out. This meter made by Plied Instruments made here in the United States is very well built. It is a very, very good meter. It gives me the ability to see the signal from each individual orbital location, and then to balance those signals out so I don't have any less signal or more signal on any one satellite that I absolutely need. This is an expensive meter. It is not something the a do-it-yourself-er will probably want to purchase unless they absolutely have to have it. This meter has a built in battery. I'm telling it what kind of dish I am using, and any switches, which they aren't any. I'm turning it on, let's go down and check again that meter can give us the signal strength of multiple orbital locations. The big advantage over the less expensive meters. So we can see that L and B one, which is the one nineteen orbital location now has a signal strength of fifty-two, that is good. And then let's set it for L & B two on one ten, and I like to do transponder four. We have got a little bit of signal there, there's transponder four. Sixteen is too low so we are going to have to peak that up. So we are going back up to the dish, and we are going to raise that number up to if we can't get it in the thirties at minimum. Let's try to get a signal on that meter. We want two bars to be on the meter. One the left bar is the noise bar. It tells us if there is noise coming in off the dish. The right bar is the signal bar that actually doesn't appear unless we are on proper satellite. We want the signal bar peaked as high as we can peak it on the meter.