Nightsky overlaid with Euro Satellite whereabouts.

[Anonwelder]

I was a dbox2 user until N3 arrived and I didn't really miss the loss of it seeing as my daughter spent most of the time watching Hannah Montana on the bleedin' thing! However, I now want to go HD so looked at Freeview HD but that is not available in my area until 2012, so then looked at Freesat HD, but after much reading here am considering buying a Spiderbox 9000HD with motorised dish.

Now, my neighbour has S*Y, with the dish situated at the front corner of the house and if I installed the dish at the same place on my house, I would not be able to have a good range of satellites to have line of sight to, due to my other neighbours house. (I could go for a fixed dish and stick with one or a limited number of sats, but knowing me, I'd be wanting more viewing choice once the initial novelty has worn off). I suspect, if I sited at the end of our garden with the motorised dish, I may be able to achieve best reception there.

Dishpointer has it's uses, but I find that this cannot confirm if I can see most of the 'popular' sats that users on here seem to favour. Clearly, the more I can get out of the setup, the better.

I have played around with dishpointer for a quite a while with distance and height of obstacles, but I am wanting to see visually that I am okay to install at my desired location.

Having seen the Augmented Reality app, this would be ideal to answer my question, but I don't want to have to go buy a new phone/contract to do this.
So then, is there a website anywhere that can take my location on earth and give me a paper printout of the nightsky (stars and all that) at any given time with sat locations overlaid so I can visually look to the heavens on a clear, starry night and see what sats my dish would see? Kind of a night-time paper version of the AR app. GoogleEarth appears to show whereabouts of sats looking from space towards earth, not from ground up.

Someone else probably asked this, but 'search' tends to be me back to dishpointer.

Any help with this would be great, Thanks.

 

[pinkhelmets]

It doesnt exist.
Dishpointer is as close as you can get. I would guess having printable 360 degree views from every single location on earth through every minute of the night is logistically not ever going to succeed, so I'd forget this idea. It would be better to use a local satellite installer who could visit & advise, or maybe a friend who has a smartphone.

Perhaps state your approx location and see if anyone here can recommend somebody to help?

 

[Rumpelstiltskin.]

Just use dishpointer and select 30w/1w/5e/7e/9e/13e/16e/19.2e/23.5e/26e/28.2e/40e/42e
See if you can access tehese sats.

 

[Darklordsbane]

Hi Anonwelder
If you live in ireland or britain and can see the sun from 8am until 4pm this should give you almost everything you will need 28east would be directly at the sun between 10-11am 1west is about 1-2pm so you can work out other sat positions from there remember sats are lower on the horizon in the winter same as the sun so winter is the best time of year to do it. if your not ready at the moment to install a motor system, then check out your site and just hammer a stick or bar into the ground where your dish is going if it's going on a wall mark the wall, then step out towards the sun and hammer another one into the ground then you will have your site line if the next time its cloudy where you try to install the dish and motor . Good Luck DLB

 

[Anonwelder]

It doesnt exist.
Dishpointer is as close as you can get. I would guess having printable 360 degree views from every single location on earth through every minute of the night is logistically not ever going to succeed, so I'd forget this idea....

Hi PinkHelmets, thanks for your reply. I have spent all day today searching as I was convinced someone somewhere must have wanted the same tool. I have found a way to do what I need.

I can use Stellarium (Free planetarium program) and enable sats in there. However, the sats it shows are not geostationary, so spent more hours finding how to download TLE data for ANY satellite (geostationary too) and enable them by editing a config file within Stellarium.

The end result is stunning. A perfect starscape in realtime, showing stars and planets and any sat. Only drawback is it's not printable, so will have to take lappy outside and compare with reality.

Cloudy at the mo though....B*gger

 

[Anonwelder]

Just use dishpointer and select 30w/1w/5e/7e/9e/13e/16e/19.2e/23.5e/26e/28.2e/40e/42e
See if you can access tehese sats.

Tried this manic01. My problem was neighbouring houses/hedges with apexes in the way. If all the houses were in a neat row, it's be a doddle, but they are at all angles, so may get some sats, but not others, depending on where I choose to site the dish. Too far east along my fence and no Astra 2 due to a roof, too far west and no 30W due to a hedge.

The first clear night and I'm out there with the Stellarium. Just ran the program and there is a very bright star (RIGEL) which at my location 54.52N follows the same arc of the geostationaries. Speeding up time on the program tells me that it will be directly on top of Astra at 20:39 tonight and directly on Hispasat at 00:50 tomorrow morning

 

[Anonwelder]

Hi Anonwelder
If you live in ireland or britain and can see the sun from 8am until 4pm this should give you almost everything you will need 28east would be directly at the sun between 10-11am 1west is about 1-2pm so you can work out other sat positions from there remember sats are lower on the horizon in the winter same as the sun so winter is the best time of year to do it. if your not ready at the moment to install a motor system, then check out your site and just hammer a stick or bar into the ground where your dish is going if it's going on a wall mark the wall, then step out towards the sun and hammer another one into the ground then you will have your site line if the next time its cloudy where you try to install the dish and motor . Good Luck DLB

I like this approach. I found a website where someone wanted S*Y installing but the installer said no line of sight, so cleared off. The customer made a theodolite and armed with this and a compass, proved the installer wrong. He got them back, but did have to sign a disclaimer saying that if no signal, he would still have to pay. Still no problems after three years he said.

Stellarium shows where sun and sats are too if needed. No sun just yet to try to see where the space hardware is..

 

[Rumpelstiltskin.]

Wow you go into things far too much.
Just use dishpointer, set dish as high as possible and enjoy.

 

[telewestTUM]

dishpointer is all you need? put in the locations you can see on your house and then use the pointer reference poitns for line of sight.

itll tell you the distance and height they need to be to get a signal from the specific sat form that point. Job Done!

You just seem to be over complicating, what is a simple task!

 

[Anonwelder]

Not over-complicated, just accurate. The highest my wall mounted dish could be mounted would not be sufficient in my case due to next door's roofline, so am left selecting a position around the perimeter of the garden.

Dishpointer has no hope whatsoever of telling anybody how high a group of trees are, or the apex of a specific house, less still the distance from dish and an accurate height. Perhaps there is someone who can state, without error, how high trees are? Or what is the maximum height of a roof? I can't, nor can dishpointer, so it is not all I need. Indeed, it helps, but I could not send the sat kit back stating that I want a refund "because I was told on DW that Dishpointer said I can get a certain sat, but I can't"...It wouldn't stand up in any court in the land.

Line of sight is paramount, so why not trust human eyesight? Sure, I could bounce a laser to determine fairly accurate distance and get the ladders and a tape out for height once I gained access to the neighbours house and climbed the trees, but isn't it perfectly reasonable to look into the sky and know instantly? What is so wrong with that?

If there was no call for a more accurate answer than "use dishpointer" then why did someone develop the augmented reality app?

 

[Rumpelstiltskin.]

Ok mate you win, enjoy your trip.

 

[Anonwelder]

Manic01, the only thing I want to win at is site my dish correctly. If it was a ten quid terrestrial aerial this was about, then no great loss if I failed.

Using Stellarium, I can now go ahead and spend 250 quid, but I would not be as confident with Dishpointer alone.

 

[dick b]

just do a temporary setup and see what you get as long as the bottom of the dish is twice the distance away from the height of an obstacle it will probably be fine.

 

[Rumpelstiltskin.]

That wont be good enough.
My solution, get an installer around to assess your house/dwelling and advise on whats logistically possible.

 

[Anonwelder]

I've taken photos facing south of a couple of potential locations for the dish, printed them out and aligned south on photos onto stellarium south by laying on laptop screen. This shows I can get from Astra to hispasat, but it's just a knats chuff that I get Astra. Neighbours soil pipe stack protrudes through the roof and it is this type of problem I was aiming to avoid by making sure. Can't see this on Dishpointer.

I'll post photos of what I've done so far with this in New Year, so for now, all the best and thanks for your input.

 

[Mick]

I moved my dish 3 times and its, almost 15 meters up lol.

It's all part of the fun lol, get up there and make it work lol.

Mick

 

[Anonwelder]

I moved my dish 3 times and its, almost 15 meters up lol.

It's all part of the fun lol, get up there and make it work lol.

Mick

I don't want wifey rolling her eyes with and taking the p*ss with me up and down the ladder. I went thru all that fitting my solar panels...