[BC] Satellite finders

[Tom Taggart]

Spent all day outside trying to line up a 10' solid dish to
get a radio net feed from Galaxy 16.  The network engineer
brought over his Bird-Dog.  It's good for finding the bird,
but, as we discovered, you really need a spectrum analyzer
to peak the dish. For one thing, the Bird Dog looks at a
digital signal, so there is a lag time on the display. 

We got good signal level indication on the Bird-Dog, and it
indicated we were looking at the correct satellite and
polarization.  Still no lock on the Comstream now in use for
the network, nor on a brand new XDS receiver.  Then he
tilted the XDS receiver the wrong way, a little screw fell
out of it, and it went completely dead (didn't blow the line
fuse, must of gotten the power supply fuse).

We called in a spectrum analyzer from the local two-way
shop.  A sweep with a "naked" LNB didn't see any strong
local signals (cell tower 1/4 mile away). We then used the
S/A to peak up the dish best we could tell.  Did see a
suspicious carrier, but it was apparently outside the
downlink passband.  Still no lock. 

Best guess is we've used up the last 10 minutes of life in
that particular Comstream. A FTA digital TV receiver now
gets lots of unencrypted video from sources that are
supposed to be on this bird. Before, couldn't get anything
that wasn't scrambled.  Unfortunately this little TV
receiver picks up anything and everything, so it is kind of
useless to set-up the dish, only as kind of a quality
monitor once it is locked in.