# how hard is it to aim a dish 1000



## paychekkk (Jan 15, 2006)

I just had my 411 and a dish 1000 installed last weekend. I have been having dropouts on the HD news and I think the rave. I checked the signal strength on 129 and it is 50 to 57. The other two satt signal strengths are 80 to 85. My installer did not do a good job at all. I called Dish support and they cannot get anyone out until next Friday morning. How hard is it to fine tune the satt. Is there instructions somewhere on the web that make this fairly easy. The dish 1000 with three lnbs looks like it might be tricky. I am a electrical tech at a local power plant and if someone was to send me in the right direction I can get it done myself. Any help would be great.
Thanx
Mikey


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## sat tech (Jan 16, 2006)

i woul'nt try to mess with it unless there is two people and a 2 way radios or a sat meter. is the mast level? you won't be able to tell unless you take the dish off. check the elevation the skew. line of site. your best bet it to wait intill the next installer comes out. hopfully you wont get the same tech. 50 to 57 is terrible even the 80's is not good. i'm not from your area so i don't know what can be acheived.in dm iowa i can get all of them 119/110/129 in the upper 90's


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## Rob Glasser (Feb 22, 2005)

Good luck getting it higher. What you are seeing is the best I can get with my Dish 1000 in the Seattle WA area, hopefully that is not the limit for the area of the country you are in.


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## invaliduser88 (Apr 23, 2002)

I would expect better in New Mexico.


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## LUNASDUDE (Feb 2, 2006)

invaliduser88 said:


> I would expect better in New Mexico.


I'm in Los Lunas NM and I'm getting about %85 on all Satts and the installer didn't seem to be interested in getting it much higher than that when he put in my Dish 1000 and 411 in Saturday!
But it seems to work ok for now but im watching it very carefully and if I get a bunch of drop out when we have any rain or snow (like that's going to happen! )
I will be calling them back to get it better.
BTW my old dish 500 and 811 got me in the low %90 range!
Maybe something about a 1000 dish? Or a combo of the Dish and our area?
OR maybe the signal's being blocked by all the UFO's landing in Roswell???:eek2:


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## paychekkk (Jan 15, 2006)

LUNASDUDE said:


> I'm in Los Lunas NM and I'm getting about %85 on all Satts and the installer didn't seem to be interested in getting it much higher than that when he put in my Dish 1000 and 411 in Saturday!
> But it seems to work ok for now but im watching it very carefully and if I get a bunch of drop out when we have any rain or snow (like that's going to happen! )
> I will be calling them back to get it better.
> BTW my old dish 500 and 811 got me in the low %90 range!
> Maybe something about a 1000 dish? Or a combo of the Dish and our area?


Thanx lunasdude!! That is all I wanted to hear, someone from NM.
Mikey


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## MusicDan (Feb 10, 2006)

I'd wait for the tech and I wouldn't let him leave until he gets a 129 signal in the 80s or higher.


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## GrumpyBear (Feb 1, 2006)

Just installed my Dish1000 yesterday, its not that hard to do, if he has you close already to fine tune it. I do recommended 2 way communication with somebody infront of the TV. You may want to double check his Elevation, thats seems to be the most common problem. You may even want to adjust the Elevation 1 degree up or 1 degree down, and then check the Azimuth. I want to know why it isn't documented very well that with the new 1000 DP Plus Twin has 2 outs on it, for your for recievers so if you only have 2, you don't need a switch. The 129 DP Single cables over to the DP Plus Twin. Makes cabling a lot cleaner and less points of failure in a 2 reciever environment.


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## MusicDan (Feb 10, 2006)

GrumpyBear said:


> Just installed my Dish1000 yesterday, its not that hard to do, if he has you close already to fine tune it. I do recommended 2 way communication with somebody infront of the TV. You may want to double check his Elevation, thats seems to be the most common problem. You may even want to adjust the Elevation 1 degree up or 1 degree down, and then check the Azimuth. I want to know why it isn't documented very well that with the new 1000 DP Plus Twin has 2 outs on it, for your for recievers so if you only have 2, you don't need a switch. The 129 DP Single cables over to the DP Plus Twin. Makes cabling a lot cleaner and less points of failure in a 2 reciever environment.


No offense Grumpy, but for most of us, appears a might less complicated to wait for the tech than to get another party to help and establish two-way communication.


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## bhenge (Mar 2, 2005)

One thing that surprised the 'tech' who installed my 1000 (replacing a 500) is that the skew adjustment was actually more accurate when using the Dish500 settings and not the ones provided for Dish1000 (at least for me here in NC, your location may vary). With the 1000 settings my signal levels for 119/110 were in the 87 range and 129 in the 68 range. When we readjusted back to the 500 settings, 119/110 were 98 and 102 and 129 was 78. Final tweaking upped those numbers 2 points each.


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## GrumpyBear (Feb 1, 2006)

MusicDan said:


> No offense Grumpy, but for most of us, appears a might less complicated to wait for the tech than to get another party to help and establish two-way communication.


No offense taken, I just think people make to much of pointing the dish. Its not that hard to do. I have gone in a fixed MANY mistakes done by the so called pro tech. Not that some of them aren't good, but alot of them just don't have much of a clue, and in this case the Tech had him close, already and was going to comeback, so why not play with it a little. Granted I started doing this kind of stuff back when you had to use a sliderule, or good ol Fashion Math, to figure out Elevation and Azimuth, and the only way you new you were getting a signal was with bounce back when you keyed the handset. So to have a graph telling you when your signal is good and bad as you move the Antenna, makes life really easy.


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## Alan R. Pope (Jan 16, 2004)

being as it seems there is allot of trouble getting a strong signal on 129 with the dish 1000, would it be better to have a dish 500 for 110/119 and another dish 5oo for the 129 satellite?? i live in southern nevada.thanks


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## pinkey2u (Jan 21, 2006)

Alan R. Pope said:


> being as it seems there is allot of trouble getting a strong signal on 129 with the dish 1000, would it be better to have a dish 500 for 110/119 and another dish 5oo for the 129 satellite?? i live in southern nevada.thanks


Those are my thoughts also. I live North of Seattle here in Washington State and had an installation of a 411 (only 1 of 2 that I had ordered) along with the Dish 1000 on Feb 6th. The tech aligned the point setting with the 119 and the readings were 119-low 100's...110-high 90's but with the 129 it was in the high 50's. On Feb 12th he installed the other 411 and then tried to tweak the sat dish. He made an adj with the skew and tried a small correction to the West and tried a degree or so adj up and then down with elevation which dropped the 119 to the mid to high 90's...110 to the high 80's but raised 129 to the mid to high 60's. Even though 129 was raised to the mid to high 60's, I dropped most of the Voom channels last night in a rain storm. It is my opinion also that maybe I might be able to get a better dish point on 129 if it was on a separate dish. I have a tech scheduled to come out Thursday, Feb 16th to try and see what can be done to receive higher readings for the 129 satellite. I may be leaving the Dish 1000 to handle the 110 & 119 sats and then getting a Dish 500 to handle the 129 sat.


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## GrumpyBear (Feb 1, 2006)

What are good signal Strengths when using a Dish1000? I have noticed a big difference in signal strength vs different Transponders. Does it matter which transponder you use? I have good signal depending on the Transponder.


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## HDdude24 (Feb 9, 2006)

Grumpy how good is the signal strength in Cali? i'm near Monterey- Salinas, I get mine install monday just wanted to know good it was in Cali.


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## GrumpyBear (Feb 1, 2006)

Currently I have 119 at 100+, 110 is at 80+, and 129 is 70+
I am in North San Diego if that helps you out. I did use the Dish1000 setting to get started but changed Elevation up 2 degrees. Azimuth, is what it is, not sure exactly.


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## pinkey2u (Jan 21, 2006)

Well they sent two techs out today to see what can be done about bringing better reception to my house with the 129 satellite. He Birdogged the 129 sat only to see what could be done for a maximum point setting. No matter what he tried he could not better a reading of 71 on one transponder while the rest of the transponders were reading less with the average I would say were low to the upper 60's. So they then made adjustments to the Dish 1000 which more or less ended up with the same readings that the previous installer had ended up. 119-90's...110-80's...129-60's with the highest of 71. Our conclusion was it would be a waste of time and money to try a separate dish setup for the 129 satellite.


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## trouble (Feb 14, 2006)

I have noticed that here in the North West region of the U.S. most of the installers that I send out in the field can usually only get between 50-70% signal strength on 129. The Dish 1000 us not really the problem with the signal from what I am told it is more of a problem with satellite 129. That is why some of my installer's instead install a second dish pointed at 61.5 to get a higher signal strength.


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## Rob Glasser (Feb 22, 2005)

pinkey2u said:


> Well they sent two techs out today to see what can be done about bringing better reception to my house with the 129 satellite. He Birdogged the 129 sat only to see what could be done for a maximum point setting. No matter what he tried he could not better a reading of 71 on one transponder while the rest of the transponders were reading less with the average I would say were low to the upper 60's. So they then made adjustments to the Dish 1000 which more or less ended up with the same readings that the previous installer had ended up. 119-90's...110-80's...129-60's with the highest of 71. Our conclusion was it would be a waste of time and money to try a separate dish setup for the 129 satellite.


Your location says Mountlake Terrace, is that Mountlake Terrace, WA? If so I'm in the same area and that has been my results as well. I'm starting to think this part of the county is always going to have problems with the 129 location.

Nevermind, I just saw your post above, it is WA, so yes, you probably won't get better, though I wonder if 70 is enough for stability, because I'm not getting it with the 60's. In fact periodically my signal drops to the 30's and I lose all the channels on 129.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Lets hold out hope, Rob, that later in the year E6 can be bumped over to 129° and give E5 a little help if not replace it. HD and 129° are important to E* -- something must be done.


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## logicman (Feb 9, 2006)

Speaking of the Dish1000 ... I'm in Colorado and I currently have a Dish500 with the 301 receiver. When I get my ViP622 installed next week, will the Dish1000 replace the Dish500 or will I have to use both dishes to get all of the HD channels with my metal package? (I'm hoping that I only need one dish.)

Thanks for any insight.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

The Dish1000 replaces the Dish500 - picking up the two satellites a Dish500 receives (119° and 110°) and adding 129°.


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## logicman (Feb 9, 2006)

James Long said:


> The Dish1000 replaces the Dish500 - picking up the two satellites a Dish500 receives (119° and 110°) and adding 129°.


James,

So I won't "need" to see the 61.5 satellite either now or in the future?


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Not unless you want:
1) The HD Test Channel (nightly fish tank)
2) International Channels
3) SkyAngel (separate programming service)
4) CBS-HD East (if you qualify)
5) A couple of decent PI channels
6) (in some markets) Local SD channels that will be moving to Dish1000 anyways


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## pinkey2u (Jan 21, 2006)

Rob Glasser said:


> Your location says Mountlake Terrace, is that Mountlake Terrace, WA? If so I'm in the same area and that has been my results as well. I'm starting to think this part of the county is always going to have problems with the 129 location.
> 
> Nevermind, I just saw your post above, it is WA, so yes, you probably won't get better, though I wonder if 70 is enough for stability, because I'm not getting it with the 60's. In fact periodically my signal drops to the 30's and I lose all the channels on 129.


*Rob*...forgot to add WA so I updated my info. Ha ha...yeah that fluctuation of 10 to 15 points is unbelievable. The techs were watching transponder 11 today on 129 after watching World Cinema and it run from 62 down to 40 then lost the satellite all within 5 minutes. Perfect timing!!! That was after they made their final adjustment with the dish. I do hope E* finds a solution to this 129 sat problem. Maybe like James says, moving E6 over to the E5 location on 129 could be what we need.


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## Rob Glasser (Feb 22, 2005)

James Long said:


> Lets hold out hope, Rob, that later in the year E6 can be bumped over to 129° and give E5 a little help if not replace it. HD and 129° are important to E* -- something must be done.


I don't know much about the birds, is E6 a more powerful satellite?

I'm glad that tech saw the fluctuations when he was onsite. I hope they report that back to dish. Since installing my Dish1000 I haven't had a single complete recording. All of them have signal loss in them.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

E5 and E6 are practically identical - if they share the load they might be able to raise the power output on each of the transponders E* wishes to use.


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