Align a satellite dish with Google Maps

As someone who has struggled with a satellite dish self-installation just for fun, I have to ask: WHERE was this killer service when I needed it? Hit up this page over at UKSatelliteHelp, enter your street address and then pick from the lengthy list of satellites. You'll end up with a Google Map centered on your address along with an alignment line for the bird that you chose! That's half of the battle: finding the azimuth; and yes, there's another "words hard to put in a blog post" for me. w00t! The above pic represents one of the three Dish Network sats I point to as we live across the street from the house location I picked. No, we don't live in a corn field; we just need an updated aerial pic.

You'll still have to determine the proper satellite altitude for your dish, but now that you have a map with viewable landmarks, that should be the least of your concerns: just slowly move the dish up and down. Don't be fooled by the UK-based domain name; I was able to find DIRECTV, Dish/Echostar and other satellites for various U.S. markets as well.

(via Hackszine)

Comments

[GoodThings2Life]

This is really, really cool... almost enough to make me wish I had a satellite dish! :)

[Anton P. Nym]

As I feared, I'm on the wrong side of my building to see any satellites for local services. Oh well. If I do want HD content, I'll have to go with cable. (or an external ATSC tuner for my monitor.)

-- Steve