1. Dish and LNB installation
    1. Selecting a company to do the work
      1. Look for a company with more than just consumer back-yard installation experience.
      2. Call other radio stations, TV stations and cable TV systems for recommended vendors. Radio satellite experience is more valuable than more common TV satellite experience.
      3. Ask what kinds of dishes the installation company did for them. Were they all the small 0.5-meter Ku-band DBS dishes? You want experience in the 3 to 5 meter range.
      4. Or use your consulting engineer or contract engineer if experienced with dish installations.
    2. How to insure correct assembly
      1. Parabolic shape
        1. Follow manual instructions carefully. Assembly of the main reflector into its parabola shape should be foolproof. Pieces or sections should fit together only one way.
        2. Once the dish is assembled, look across the face of the dish along two diameters about 90 degrees apart. The near and far edges should be in a single plane.
      2. Focal Length
        1. This is the distance from the feed element to the center of the main reflector. Sometimes called "F:D", or "F over D" for focal-length-to-diameter ratio.
        2. Some dishes have fixed-length rods to prevent the focal length from being set wrong. However, if a kit is available to add variable-length hardware, you may be able to get some improvement by installing the kit and adjusting focal length slightly.
        3. For antennas with adjustable focal lengths, the manual may tell you to adjust it to a specific measurement. You should treat this number as a starting point, and not as the final adjustment. Tape measures are unweildy to handle inside a dish.
        4. After the antenna is assembled and pointed, you should adjust the focal length for maximum desired signal or minimum undesired signal or both.
    3. Antenna anti-icing:  Both fluffy snow (which absorbs radio frequency energy) and freezing rain (which reflects it randomly) can distort an antenna’s pattern which can allow increased adjacent-satellite interference as well as reducing the desired signal.
      1. Heaters :  Don't call them "de-icers" because dish antenna heaters are rarely powerful enough to melt ice or snow that have already formed. They should be turned on by an operator or by an automatic device which senses precipitation and freezing temperatures just as sleet or snow begins.
        1. Heaters are expensive ($1,500 to $3,000 in addition to the cost of the dish). Can equal or exceed the cost of the antenna alone.
        2. Heaters are reliable and cna be made automatic by using temperature and precipitation sensors.
        3. Most require an insulating layer at the back of the dish to force the heat forward into the main reflector.
        4. When budgeting, take the cost of power into account.
          1. In most places, power costs between 5 and 20 cents per kilowatt-hour.
          2. A 4,000-watt heater uses 4 kilowatts. At 10 cents per kW-hr, that's 40 cents per hour.
          3. If it snows every third day for five months a year in your climate and if you leave the deicer elements turned on for 12 hours each time it snows, that will cost 40 cents/hr x 12 hours x 50 days per year = $240 per year.
      2. Antenna covers ("drumheads")
        1. Vinyl or treated fabric stretched across aperture of dish.
        2. Slippery enough for most snow and ice to slide off.
        3. About $1,000 for a 3.8 meter antenna.
      3. Hydrophobic coatings (Vellox)
        1. Special primer and paint which you apply with brush or sprayer.
        2. Acts like Teflon, water beads up and will not stick.
        3. Won't prevent very dry, cold snow from accumulating, but wet snow will roll off.
        4. About $300 per application; lasts about 2 years.
      4. Brooms and shovels: The tried and true manual method.
    4. Setting and adjusting the antenna
      1. Aiming
        1. Look up or calculate azimuth and elevation angles.

          2. Affiliate Services can e-mail you an Excel spreadsheet that calculates azimuth and elevation; you enter your station's latitude and longitude.
        2. Set elevation angle first, attach receiver, and slowly sweep the sky in the expected quadrant (if you are east of the satellite, it will be in the southwestern sky) until signal is acquired.

          3. Know the receiver's expected acquisition time; you may need to sweep in small increments to give time for receiver to acquire at each new position.
        3. Don't get tricked into tuning to a sidelobe.
          1. Once signal is found, slowly sweep about five degrees either side. If signal is acquired at three points, use the middle one.
          2. The outer two (sidelobe) points will be significantly weaker and may not be detectable. If you only find one point at which any reception occurs, use that point. Sidelobes exist in both the elevation (up and down) and azimuth (side to side) axes.
          3. Peak the incoming signal using both the azimuth and elevation axes of the dish.
      2. Polarization
        1. Point the antenna for strongest signal from the desired satellite first.
        2. Polarization cannot be correctly set until antenna is pointed squarely at the desired satellite.
          1. Rotate the feed element 360 degrees to find the best signal strength and minimum cross-polarized interference.
          2. Use an inexpensive spectrum analyzer if you have one or can borrow one. Cable TV head-ends or TV stations may have them.
            1. Learn to read the analyzer.
              1. A single satellite polarization usually has 12 equally-spaced blobs of RF energy on 40 MHz centers. These are the 12 transponders of that polarization. If you can't see 12 blobs of energy, either:
                1. The analyzer's "resolution bandwidth" is set too wide which allows the transponder signals to run together horizontally on the screen, or
                2. One or more of the transponders is not being used by a customer at that time.
              2. If you see 24 blobs of energy on 20 MHz centers, then you are seeing a mix of the vertical and horizontal polarizations.
                1. Turn the polarization element and see how the two, interleaved groups of 12 transponders can be made to appear and disappear.
                2. Pick the polarization which gives you good ABC reception, then null out the undesired polarization.
              3. The frequency band is "backwards" at the L-band intermediate frequency.
                1. 4,200 MHz becomes 950 MHz
                2. 3,700 MHz becomes 1,450 MHz.
            2. ABC's formats on GE-3 are on transponders 13 and 17. When looking at the horizontally-polarized downlink at L-band, these should be the 7th and 9th blobs of energy when counting from right to left.
            3. ABC's formats and news services on Satcom C-5 are on transponder 23. When looking at the horizontally-polarized downlink at L-band, this should be the 12th blob of energy when counting from right to left (or the first blob when counting from left to right).
        3. Adjust focal length
        4. Repeat all four adjustments a second time
          1. Antenna adjustments have some effect on each other.
          2. So, peak up the azimuth, elevation, polarization, and focal length a second time.
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