DIY Digital Satellite Installation

[bigbanana]

Yesterday afternoon I managed to install a freesat system from scratch including the mounting of the dish bracket on the wall, the dish installation and the alignment. The whole thing wasn’t that difficult to do and the signal strength at the end was some 72%. My wife watched the signal strength bar displayed on the TV screen and gave me a shout when it reached the maximum following which I tightened all the bolts on the dish and bracket.
Now I’ve always been led to believe that a digital satellite installation requires a satellite signal meter of some sort due to the need to get the optimum signal from tilting the dish and the skew angle of the LNB. It’s been said that it’s nothing like the old analogue satellite installations where someone shouting “left a bit, right a bit” would do.
Is it really feasible to install satellite dishes like this without a meter of sorts or have I just been lucky? I didn’t alter the skew of the LNB as it had been tightened on its own bracket.

Thanks.

[bigbanana]

I forgot to add that I used a nearby dish to get the general direction that I needed to point the dish at. All the same I understand that setting it up like this more often that not will not work as it's insufficiently precise.

[heathfield]

If you're getting a good signal and all programs, then why worry? There's advice on setting up a Freesat dish here...

http://www.xtendedplay.co.uk/howto-installing-freesat.html

If you read through the article, you'll find that your method is perfectly satisfactory.

[magicmerlin]

The Satellite Signal Receiver enables the installer to position the dish correctly without having to either a) rely on a third person shouting through a living room window or b) fixing dish, getting down off ladder to look at signal strength on tv then having to get back up ladder to tweak dish then having to repeat procedure until dish is at very close to ideal position.