You can use the cheap meter. The steps to find the correct satellite is the
same for all meters.

First, check the azmuth, elevation and skew or tilt settings for your zip
code on your satellite receiver.

Make sure your mast is perfectly plumb (if it is not, you will have trouble
finding satellites)

Set the tilt or skew setting on the dish, and set the elevation setting.
You will not need to further adjust the tilt or skew, so you can lock this
down tight. The elevation setting you will tweak later.

With your compass, find a landmark in the distance that lines up with your
particular compass setting. For instance, 101WL (DirecTV) in my area is 193
degrees. You will use that landmark in a moment. My suggestion is to use
the core location to aim your dish. 101 WL for DirecTV and 119 WL for DISH
Network.

Place your meter inline, and point your antenna in the general location of
your landmark. Slowly move antenna until your meter peaks. Slightly
tighten to the mast. Lightly pull back on the top and bottom of the antenna
and see if the strength goes up or down. Adjust your elevation settings
accordingly, and lock down the dish antenna. Check your signal strength
meter on your satellite receiver, you should be all set.

Where most people make a mistake is they let the multisatellite function
overwhelm them. Remember, if your mast is plumb, and the correct elevation
and tilt or skew is set for the antenna, you should hit the correct
satellite location every time. If you are having to go back and make
significant adjustment to these settings, you either have the wrong
satellite, or your mast is not plumb.

Best of Luck!

Alan
I'm not sure this is the best forum for this question, but the
satellite-specific forum I found seemed to be full of people trying to
get satellite signals for free with black-market equipment, so thought
I'd try here instead...
I have a 3-LNB multisatellite dish used with DirecTV. It's very tough
for me to align it correctly to all 3 satellites, with me on the roof
and my wife attempting to communicate what the on-screen signal meters
are showing two floors down.
So I've been looking for a meter or something I can use up on the roof
to allow me to see exactly what's happening as I align it. I've found
several, ranging from about $25 up to a couple of thousand dollars, and
naturally, the $25 version is the one I'd like.
But I can't see how you align a multisatellite dish using one of these
meters. It's a simple analog needle meter, with a coax input and
output, along with a dial that appears to set the needle's current
reading. I don't see anyway to tell the meter WHICH satellite you're
currently trying to align to. For instance, when using the sat
receiver's on-screen meters, you have to manually switch it from Sat A,
to Sat B, to Sat C to make the adjustments for each satellite. I assume
each is delivering a different frequency to the receiver, and you're
picking which one of those frequencies to monitor.
But there doesn't appear to be any way to set or adjust this on one of
these little meters. So I assume what you will be looking at one the
meter is always the composite of all three satellites, which really
won't work for alignment. On one of the web sites for these things, I
saw an explanation that said you "simply hook it to one LNB, peak the
signal, then hook it to the next LNB". But I don't see how to do that
either...my dish has four outputs, but those are for four different
receivers. Each output would carry the signal from all three LNBs. I
don't see a way to connect to a single LNB at a time for alignment
purposes.
So does anyone know how you could align a dish like mine, using one of