Last year my Dad offered me an unused tuner on his DirecTV account along with a corresponding dish. I wired the house, drilled a few holes for the cable, and bolted the dish to my roof, ready to capture the satellite signal in the southern sky. I minutely adjusted the dish’s position every few seconds, paused, and asked my wife through my cell phone if the tuner picked up a signal. It was an endless while loop of failure:

while (dish.noSignal())
{
    dish.adjust(1);
    count(3);
    phone.dial("Wife");
    phone.ask("any signal?");
}

Several additional attempts were made that each lasted several hours. I then abandoned the project as we made preparations to move into another house.

This Christmas my Dad revived my quest with the gift of a DirecTV Tivo. We again used the old dish. We didn’t bother installing the satellite. Our goal was meek: simply find a signal. We waved the dish at the southern sky for several hours with the dim hope that the connected tuner would blip any confirmation of a weak satellite signal. Nada.

We finally conceded the obvious: the dish was toast.

I found a brand new DirecTV dish on Ebay later that afternoon for a cheap price. It arrived four days later. I assembled the new dish and headed to the roof with my Dad, several feet of coaxial cable, a small TV, the satellite tuner, and electric cords. My Dad leaned the shiny new dish against the flu that thrust a few feet out from the roof to free up his hands as we connected the dish, tuner and TV. I hit the TV power button and navigated the tuner’s menu to the “Test Satellite Signal” screen, which for the past 18 months had always been a steady zero.

The TV screen lit up. Sirens went off. The satellite signal meter bar read full strength! Full strength. My Dad, leaning the satellite dish against the flu, happened upon the exact pinpoint location of the satellite in the southern sky. 18 months of zero signal. We casually lean the dish at an angle before beginning our test, and happen upon the full strength signal. What are the chances of that!?

Now clearly the new dish made finding a signal possible, but the exact location of the satellite is still hard to find with functioning equipment. A minor degree adjustment vertically or horizontally to the dish, and the signal strength will go from 100 to 0. After we bolted the satellite to the roof for the last time, it still took us another 15 minutes of adjustment to achieve the signal strength from that first chance moment.

Truly amazing.