Your
Satellite Downlink
Installing
a New Satellite Dish
IN THIS SECTION:
Site
Selection
Dish
Selection
LNB
Selection
Dish
and LNB Installation
Setting
and Adjusting the Antenna
Coaxial
Cable
Receivers
Setting
and Adjusting the Antenna:
1. To aim the satellite dish correctly, you need to calculate or look
up the azimuth and elevation angles for your site. Citadel Media Technical Services
can e-mail you an Excel spreadsheet that calculates azimuth and elevation.
Data for the top 25 radio markets can be found at our Azimuth & Elevation
page.
2. Set the elevation first, attach the receiver, and slowly sweep the
sky in the expected quadrant until the signal is acquired. Know the
receiver's expected acquisition time. You may need to sweep in small
increments to give time for the receiver to acquire at each new position.
3. Once a signal is found, slowly sweep five degrees on each side. If
signal is acquired at three points, use the middle one. Don't get tricked
into tuning to a sidelobe. The sidelobes may not be detectable, so if
you get only one point where any reception occurs, use that point. Peak
the incoming signal using both the azimuth and elevation adjustments
on the dish.
4. Determine the correct polarization by rotating the feed element 360
degrees to find the best signal strength and minimum cross-polarized
interference. Citadel Media services on Satcom C5 are horizontally polarized.
Citadel Media services on GE-3 are vertically polarized.
5. Adjust the focal length.
6. When you are done, repeat all the above steps. Peak up the azimuth,
elevation, polarization and focal length a second time.
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