Finding and recognizing geostationary satellite orbital slots includes acquiring a location estimate for a satellite broadcast receiving antenna. A set of satellite look angles is captured in the antenna's reference frame coordinate space. A pattern of expected look angles is generated from the antenna location estimate. A pattern matching algorithm is executed to determine azimuth axis rotation to transform antenna reference frame into world reference frame. The validity of the reference frame transform is then checked for correctness by looking for a satellite position outside the set of satellite positions used for the pattern matching.