Let me show you how I do it:
Of importance before we begin is to recall that all satellites are positioned in a geostationary orbit far above the equator, an area referred to as the Clarke Belt, to maximize coverage over the inhabited portions of the earth. So for us whose country is around the equator, it's relatively easy to nab these birds.
Let's say as a beginner for instance you were interested in receiving say Tv & radio stations from Tanzania kwa mfano tu. What to do? The first step is to first find out the satellite location of these stations. To do this you go to
LyngSat (Sat1) then click on the Free TV, Africa tab. This'll open up a list of all African (or other continent) countries (Sat1a), click on your country of interest and this opens up a list showing their tv/radio channels and the satellites on which they're located (Sat1b). Clicking on the channel or satellite opens up a page (Sat1c) showing all the parameters/settings for that channel as well as the satellite. Ordinarily, as long as your satellite is properly aligned,you don't have to enter these settings manually (unless perhaps for weak & unstable signals). Usually your decoder is able to automatically pick up and store the settings automatically when you do a blindscan.
Once we get our satellite details, we then open
SatBeams - Home which'll show us the footprint of our satellite of interest, i.e the region on the earth's surface where the satellite beam of interest is pointed or focused at. Staying with our example above, we found EATV, ITV, Capital & TBC1 located on Intelsat 906 at 64.2 degrees East. The footprint for this satellite will appear as shown in
SatBeams - Satellite Coverage Maps - Sat Footprint Intelsat 10-02 (Intelsat 1002, Intelsat Alpha-2, Intelsat X-02, IS-1002) / Thor 5 (Thor 2R) / Thor 6 (IS-1W) (fig Sat2). Zooming in will show you that the West Hemi beam clearly covers Kenya. Of importance here is to note that I've specifically selected the west hemi beam and not any other because this is the beam specified on lyngsat (the 2nd from last column) as containing those TV & radio stations from Tanzania.
Having established that the beam covers our region/country, we then log into
Satellite Finder / Dish Alignment Calculator with Google Maps | DishPointer.com to get the satellite parameters in terms of setting it up, i.e stuff like azimuth, LNB skew, elevation, etc (these terms have already been explained in the write-up I gave you). On dishpointer (Sat3) key in your location and satellite of interest to get the set up parameters. Staying with our example of IS906 and assuming a random location of Machakos town, then the Elevation=58.5 degrees, Azimuth=87 degrees and LNB Skew=86.6 degrees (Sat3a). For those with Android and iOS phones, get the DishPointer Augmented Reality app from your respective app stores, very handy. Though free for the Droids, kwa iOS mtalipa. Alternatively, look for apps called Dish Align and SatDir for iOS; I've used them and they're quite ok.
This done, we then head online once again, download and instal a software called GorbTrack from
Berry's Homepage. This now will assist you to know if that satellite is receivable at your specific location. After installing GorbTrack, it'll direct you on where to get the list of towns for your country of residence, in our case Kenya. It'll also be able to tell you if the satellite signal is receivable at the place where you position your di8sh taking into account obstacles in your area such as buildings, walls and trees. It'll still be able to compute the azimuth, elevation as well as the skew.
Once all this is done, you may now go ahead to assemble and install your equipment using those parameters in conjunction with a digital satellite meter. If you find the time, please consider sharing your experiences here, with pictorial evidence whenever possible.