zeroing a motorised dish

dathi1

I'm about to install a motorised dish. Should I zero at magnetic south or true south? Obviously I set the lattiude mark on the dish at at 54 deg?

L1011

True south, although these days you no longer really have to get it exactly to true south, particularly if your box is intelligent enough (decent USALS implementation)

watty

I actually use 30W if the box does USALS / Goto X properly. Much stronger than 8W (my due south approx).

The motor zero will be pointing due south if you tell the box to go 30W and find Hispsat. (Good and strong and nothing to confuse it with!)

Then fine tune the up/down of the dish on the arm (NOT the motor elevation) at 5W.

Then fine tune the East/West of the dish on the arm at 42E.

Recheck 5W.

crashedmind

I did my first install recently so may not be the best but here's what worked for me...

'used a compass to find true south to get approximate zero.

Then told USALS receiver to goto 1.0°W (Thor) to fine tune with a basic sat meter. Once fine tuned on Thor, 'checked other sats by checking sats as far east and far west as I could receive.
While 5°W (Atlantic Bird 3) is closest to my longitude (Dublin), there are other sats at 4°W and 7°W so it makes if difficult to pick out 5°W.
The nearest sats to Thor are 3.0°E and 4.0°W giving a 3.0° gap.

Then did an auto scan from west to east: 'can receive about 25 sats on Triax 88cm dish.

L1011

On a small dish, 4w and 7w are too weak to get barely a whispher, so go ahead and tune up to 5w. Analogue box will help here too, as 5w carries analogue and the others don't.

watty

Thor is poor here and 4W and 7W non-existant on 80cm in Limerick. 8W has very little on it so not much for the Sat meter.

So 5W is best general near south for most of Ireland