Ok today after much pissing about I got myself a UBC a box. Living in Vientiane I basically had to buy the dish and box in Nong Khai and either get the install done by a local place or do myself. I have put the dish up and tried the supposed 78.5 E direction of the Thaicom 5 Sat but get diddle squat! The receiver reports a 95% level pretty much regardless of angle!

Can some give tell me the what direction, angle and degree of rotation on the LNB I need to get this working. Preferably I want to do it myself instead of waiting for a local company to come and do it (important footie game tomorrow night!). There is no dishes near I can refer to for direction etc.

HELP. . . I need my footie fix!!!!

Go to http://www.dishpointer.com/

Fill in your location and select the Thaicom5 satellite at 78.5 degrees east. It will give you something like this:

Your Location

Latitude: 18.5949°

Longitude: 102.2548°

Satellite Data

Name: 78.5E Thaicom 2 | Thaicom 5

Distance: 36772km

Dish Setup Data

Elevation: 55.2°

Azimuth (true): 234.1°

Azimuth (magn.): 235.1°

LNB Skew [?]: 50.1° (Turn clockwise standing behind the dish)

Fix the elevation first, you can read the angle on the dish bracket. After you're sure the mast is exactly vertical, rotate the dish horizontally bit by bit until you got a good signal (have someone check it on the tv if you can't see the tv yourself while standing near the dish to align it).

It's not rocket science!

You can also use "Google Earth" to find your Lat/long by locating your place. Pass the cursor over your place once you find it and you'll get the Lat/Long.

It's not rocket science!

Are you kidding? How on earth did the satellites get put in orbit in the first place?

I was just reading on the Dream website, and they have a very common mistake about line-of-sight when aligning the dish:

The left image is as displayed on the website, the right image is the actual beam. So when you're selecting a place for you dish, it's more important not to mount it under a roof than to cut a tree that is 30 meters away from the dish.

All geo-stationary satellites are 36000km above the equator, and we're only a few degrees north of it....

Well I repented and got the guy out to do . . . took them literally 2 minutes after the install without any meters to have a 99% Level and 98% quality . . . I still don't understand why I couldn't get a reception as I had it at the correct and went through the whole 360 degrees!

Oh well in the end the setup was 500baht well spent for the footie tonight!

These little (60 cm) off-center dishes have to be positioned pretty accurate!

Need to be tightened up as well, stiff breeze resulting in a 2 degree movement and no more TV

Most people get confused by the off center dishes, for UBC they are actually almost looking straight up, eventhough it seems that the dish is pointe much more horizontal (as per Prasert's posted pics!)